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E.F.BENSON 


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CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 
E.    F.    BENSON 


BY  E.  F.  BENSON 


THE  FREAKS  OF  MAYFAIR 

THE  TORTOISE 

MICHAEL 

THE  OAKLEYITES 

DAVID  BLAIZE 

ARUNDEL 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


CRESCENT  AND 
I  RON    C  ROSS 

BY 

E.  F.  BENSON 


Q 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


X 


\ 

A 


COPYRIGHT,  1918, 
BY  GEORGE   H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


HISTCRK 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PREFACE 

In  compiling  the  following  pages  I  have  had 
access  to  certain  sources  of  official  information, 
the  nature  of  which  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  spec- 
ify further.  I  have  used  these  freely  in  such 
chapters  of  this  book  as  deal  with  recent  and 
contemporary  events  in  Turkey  or  in  Germany 
in  connection  with  Turkey :  the  chapter,  for  in- 
stance, entitled  * ' Deutschland  iiber  Allah,"  is 
based  very  largely  on  such  documents.  I  have 
tried  to  be  discriminating  in  their  use,  and  have 
not,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  stated  anything  de- 
rived from  them  as  a  fact,  for  which  I  had  not 
found  corroborative  evidence.  With  regard  to 
the  Armenian  massacres  I  have  drawn  largely 
on  the  testimony  collected  by  Lord  Bryce,  on 
that  brought  forward  by  Mr.  Arnold  J.  Toyn- 
bee  in  his  pamphlet  The  Murder  of  a  Nation^ 
and  The  Murderons  Tyranny  of  the  Turks,  and 
on  the  pamphlet  by  Dr.  Martin  Niepage,  called 
The  Horrors  of  Aleppo.  In  the  first  chapter  I 
have  based  the  short  historical  survey  on  the 
contribution  of  Mr.  D.  G.  Hogarth  to  The  Bal- 


22270S7 


vi  PREFACE 

hans  (Clarendon  Press,  1915).  The  chapter 
called  *'Thy  Kingdom  is  Divided"  is  in  no  re- 
spect at  all  an  official  utterance,  and  merely 
represents  the  individual  opinions  and  surmises 
of  the  author.  It  has,  however,  the  official  basis 
that  the  Allies  have  pledged  themselves  to  re- 
move the  power  of  the  Turk  from  Constanti- 
nople, and  to  remove  out  of  the  power  of  the 
Turk  the  alien  peoples  who  have  too  long  al- 
ready been  subject  to  his  murderous  rule.  I 
have,  in  fact,  but  attempted  to  conjecture  in 
what  kind  of  manner  that  promise  will  be  ful- 
filled. 

Fresh  items  of  news  respecting  internal  con- 
ditions in  Turkey  are  continually  coming  in, 
and  if  one  waited  for  them  all,  one  would  have 
to  wait  to  the  end  of  the  war  before  beginning 
to  write  at  all  on  this  subject.  But  since  such 
usefulness  as  this  book  may  possibly  have  is 
involved  with  the  necessity  of  its  appearance 
before  the  end  of  the  war,  I  set  a  term  to  the 
gathering  of  material,  and,  with  the  exception 
of  two  or  three  notes  inserted  later,  ceased  to 
collect  it  after  June  1917.  But  up  to  then  any- 
thing that  should  have  been  inserted  in  sur- 
veys and  arguments,  and  is  not,  constitutes  a 
culpable  omission  on  my  part. 

E.  F.  BENSON. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Theory  of  the  Old  Turks     ...  11 

II    The  Theory  op  the  New  Turks    ...  39 

III  The  End  op  the  Armenian  Question  .  62 

IV  The  Question  of  Syria  and  Palestine  .  107 
V    Deutschland  Uber  Allah 139 

VI    "Thy  Kingdom  is  Divided" 182 

VII    The  Grip  op  the  Octopus 226 


CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 


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CRESCENT  AND  IRON 
CROSS 

CHAPTER  I 

The  Theory  of  the  Old  Tueks 

The  maker  of  phrases  plies  a  dangerous  trade. 
Very  often  his  phrase  is  applicable  for  the  mo- 
ment and  for  the  situation  in  view  of  which  he 
coined  it,  but  his  coin  has  only  a  temporary 
validity:  it  is  good  for  a  month  or  for  a  year, 
or  for  whatever  period  during  which  the  crisis 
lasts,  and  after  that  it  lapses  again  into  a  mere 
token,  a  thing  without  value  and  without  mean- 
ing. But  the  phrase  cannot,  as  in  the  case  of 
a  monetary  coinage,  at  once  be  recalled,  for  it 
has  gone  broadcast  over  the  land,  or,  at  any 
rate,  it  is  not  recalled,  and  it  goes  on  being 
passed  from  hand  to  hand,  its  image  and  super- 
scription defaced  by  wear,  long  after  it  has 
ceased  to  represent  anything.  In  itself  it  is 
obsolete,  but  people  still  trade  with  it,  and  think 

u 


12  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

it  represents  what  it  represented  when  it  came 
hot  from  the  Mint.  And,  unfortunately,  it 
sometimes  happens  that  it  is  worse  than  value- 
less; it  becomes  a  forgery  (which  it  may  not 
have  been  when  it  came  into  circulation),  and 
deceives  those  who  traffic  with  it,  flattering 
them  with  an  unfounded  possession. 

Such  a  phrase,  which  still  holds  currency, 
was  once  coined  by  Lord  Aberdeen  in  the  pe- 
riod of  the  Crimean  War.  "Turkey  is  a  sick 
man,"  he  said,  and  added  something  which 
gave  great  offence  then  about  the  advisability 
of  putting  Turkey  out  of  his  misery.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  quote  correctly,  but  that  was  the  gist 
of  it.  Nor  do  I  challenge  the  truth  of  Lord 
Aberdeen's  phrase  at  the  period  when  he  made 
it.  It  possibly  contained  a  temporary  truth,  a 
valid  point  of  view,  which,  if  it  had  been  acted 
on,  might  have  saved  a  great  deal  of  trouble 
afterwards,  but  it  missed  then,  and  more  than 
misses  now,  the  essential  and  salient  truth 
about  Turkey.  The  phrase,  unfortunately,  still 
continued  to  obtain  credit,  and  nowadays  it  is 
a  forgery;  it  rings  false. 

For  at  whatever  period  we  regard  Turkey, 
and  try  to  define  that  monstrous  phenomenon, 
we  can  make  a  far  truer  phrase  than  Lord  Aber- 
deen's.   For  Turkey  is  not  a  sick  man:    Tur- 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS    13 

key  is  a  sickness.  He  is  not  sick,  nor  ever  has 
been,  for  he  is  the  cancer  itself,  the  devouring 
tumour  that  for  centuries  has  fed  on  living  tis- 
sue, absorlDing  it  and  killing  it.  It  has  never 
had  life  in  itself,  except  in  so  far  that  the 
power  of  preying  on  and  destroying  life  con- 
stitutes life,  and  such  a  power,  after  all,  we 
are  accustomed  to  call  not  life,  but  death. 
Turkey,  like  death,  continues  to  exist  and  to 
dominate,  through  its  function  of  killing.  Life 
cannot  kill,  it  is  disease  and  death  that  kill,  and 
from  the  moment  that  Turkey  passed  from 
being  a  nomadic  tribe  moving  westwards  from 
the  confines  of  Persia,  it  has  existed  only 
and  thrived  on  a  process  of  absorption  and  of 
murder.  When  first  the  Turks  came  out  of 
their  Eastern  fastnesses  they  absorbed;  when 
they  grew  more  or  less  settled,  and  by  degrees 
the  power  of  mere  absorption,  as  by  some  fail- 
ure of  digestion,  left  them,  they  killed.  They 
became  a  huge  tumour,  that  nourished  itself  by 
killing  the  living  tissues  that  came  in  contact 
with  it.  Now,  by  the  amazing  irony  of  fate, 
who  weaves  stranger  dramas  than  could  ever 
be  set  on  censored  stages,  for  they  both  take 
hundreds  of  years  to  unravel  themselves,  and 
are  of  the  most  unedifying  character,  Turkey, 
the  rodent  cancer,  has  been  infected  by  another 


.iJE^-^w 


14.  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

with  greater  organisation  for  devouring;  the 
disease  of  Ottomanism  is  threatened  by  a  more 
deadly  hungerer,  and  Prussianism  has  inserted 
its  crab-pincers  into  the  cancer  that  came  out 
of  Asia.  Those  claws  are  already  deeply  set, 
and  the  problem  for  civilised  nations  is  first 
to  disentangle  the  nippers  that  are  cancer  in  a 
cancer,  and  next  to  deprive  of  all  power  over 
alien  peoples  the  domination  that  has  already 
been  allowed  to  exist  too  long. 

The  object  of  this  book  is  the  statement  of 
the  case  on  which  all  defenders  of  liberty  base 
their  prosecution  against  Turkey  itself,  and 
against  the  Power  that  to-day  has  Turkey  in 
its  grip. 

Historical  surveys  are  apt  to  be  tedious,  but 
in  order  to  understand  at  all  adequately  the 
case  against  Turkey  as  a  ruler  and  controller 
of  subject  peoples,  it  is  necessary  to  go,  though 
briefly,  into  her  blood-stained  genealogy.  There 
is  no  need  to  enter  into  ethnological  discussions 
as  to  earlier  history,  or  define  the  difference 
between  the  Osmanli  Turks  and  those  who  were 
spread  over  Asia  Minor  before  the  advent  of 
the  Osmanlis  from  the  East.  But  it  was  the 
Osmanlis  who  were  the  cancerous  and  devour- 
ing nation,  and  it  is  they  who  to-day  rule  over  a 
vast  territory  (subject  to  Germany)  of  peoples 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS  15 

alien  to  them  by  religion  and  blood  and  all  the 
instincts  common  to  civilised  folk.  Until  Ger- 
many, "deep  patient  Germany,*'  suddenly 
hoisted  her  colours  as  a  champion  of  murder 
and  rapine  and  barbarism,  she  the  mother  of 
art  and  literature  and  science,  there  was  noth- 
ing in  Europe  that  could  compare  with  the  an- 
achronism of  Turkey  being  there  at  all.  Then, 
in  August  1914,  there  was  hoisted  the  German 
flag,  superimposed  with  skulls  and  cross-bones, 
and  all  the  insignia  of  piracy  and  highway  rob- 
bery on  land  and  on  sea,  and  Germany  showed 
herself  an  anachronism  worthy  to  impale  her 
arms  on  the  shield  of  the  most  execrable  dom- 
ination that  has  ever  oppressed  the  world  since 
the  time  when  the  Huns  under  Attila  raged  like 
a  forest  fire  across  the  cultivated  fields  of  Euro- 
pean civilisation.  To-day,  in  the  name  of  Kul- 
tur,  a  similar  invasion  has  broken  on  shores 
that  seemed  secure,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  it 
has  found  its  most  valuable  victim  and  ally  in 
the  Power  that  adopted  the  same  methods  of 
absorption  and  extermination  centuries  before 
the  Hohenzollerns  ever  started  on  their  career 
of  highway  robbery.  But  like  seeks  like,  and 
perhaps  it  was  not  wholly  the  fault  of  our  aston- 
ishing diplomacy  in  Constantinople  that  Tur- 
key, wooed  like  some  desirable  maiden,  cast  in 


16  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

r  ^ 

her  lot  with  the  Power  that  by  instinct  and  tra- 
dition most  resembled  her.  Spiritual  blood,  no 
less  than  physical  blood,  is  thicker  than  water, 
and  Gott  and  Allah,  hand-in-hand,  pledged  each 
other  in  the  cups  they  had  filled  with  the  blood 
that  poured  from  the  wine-presses  of  Belgium 
and  of  Armenia. 

For  centuries  before  the  Osmanli  Turks  made 
their  appearance  in  Asia  Minor,  there  had  come 
from  out  of  the  misty  East  numerous  bodies  of 
Turks,  pushing  westwards,  and  spreading  over 
the  Euphrates  valley  and  over  Persia,  in  noma- 
dic oi*  military  colonisations,  and  it  is  not  until 
the  thirteenth  century  that  we  find  the  Osmanli 
Turks,  who  give  their  name  to  that  congrega- 
tion of  races  known  as  the  Ottoman  Empire, 
established  in  the  north-west  corner  of  Asia 
Minor.  Like  all  previous  Turkish  immigrations, 
they  came  not  in  any  overwhelming  horde,  with 
sword  in  one  hand  and  Koran  in  the  other,  but 
as  a  small  compact  body  with  a  genius  for  mili- 
tary organisation,  and  the  gift,  which  they  re- 
tain to  this  day,  of  stalwart  fighting.  The  pol- 
icy to  which  they  owed  their  growth  was  absorp- 
tion, and  the  people  whom  they  first  began  to 
absorb  were  Greeks  and  other  Christians,  and 
it  was  to  a  Christian  girl,  Nilufer,  that  Osman 
married  his  son  Orkhan.    They  took  Christian 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS    17 

r  — 

youths  from  the  families  of  Greek  dwellers, 
forced  them  to  apostatise,  gave  them  military 
training,  and  married  them  to  Turkish  girls.  It 
was  out  of  this  blend  of  Greek  and  Turkish 
blood,  as  Mr.  D.  G.  Hogarth  points  out,  that 
they  derived  their  national  being  and  their  na- 
tional strength.  This  system  of  recruiting  they 
steadily  pursued  not  only  among  the  Christian 
peoples  with  whom  they  came  in  contact,  but 
among  the  settlements  of  Turks  who  had  pre- 
ceded them  in  this  process  of  pushing  west- 
wards, and  formed  out  of  them  the  professional 
soldiery  kno^vn  as  Janissaries.  They  did  not 
fight  for  themselves  alone,  but  as  mercenaries 
lent  their  arms  to  other  peoples,  Moslem  and 
Christian  alike,  who  would  hire  their  services. 
This  was  a  policy  that  paid  well,  for,  after  hav- 
ing delivered  some  settlement  from  the  depreda- 
tions of  an  inconvenient  neighbour,  and  with 
their  pay  in  their  pocket,  they  sometimes  turned 
on  those  who  had  hired  their  arms,  took  their 
toll  of  youths,  and  finally  incorporated  them  in 
their  growing  empire.  Like  an  insatiable 
sponge,  they  mopped  up  the  sprinklings  of  dis- 
connected peoples  over  the  fruitful  floor  of  Asia 
Minor,  and  swelled  and  prospered.  But  as  yet 
the  extermination  of  these  was  not  part  of  their 
programme:  they  absorbed  the  strength  and 


18  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

I     ^ 

manhood  of  their  annexations  into  their  own 
soldiery,  and  came  back  for  more.  They  did 
not  levy  those  taxes  paid  in  the  persons  of  sol- 
diers for  their  armies  from  their  co-religionists, 
since  Islam  may  not  fight  against  Islam,  but  by 
means  of  peaceful  penetration  (a  policy  long 
since  abandoned)  they  united  scattered  settle- 
ments of  Turks  to  themselves  by  marriages  and 
the  bond  of  a  common  tongue  and  religion. 

Their  expansion  into  Europe  began  in  the 
middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  when,  as  mer- 
cenaries, they  fought  against  the  Serbs,  and 
fifty  years  later  they  had  a  firm  hold  over  Bul- 
garia as  well.  Greece  was  their  next  prey ;  they 
penetrated  Bosnia  and  Macedonia,  and  in  1453 
attacked  and  took  Constantinople  under  Mo- 
hammed the  Conqueror.  StiU  true  to  the  policy 
of  incorporation  they  continued  to  mop  up  the 
remainder  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  and  at  the 
same  time  consolidated  themselves  further  in 
Asia  Minor.  By  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  their  expansion  reached  its  ut- 
most geographical  limits,  but  already  the  Em- 
pire held  within  it  the  seeds  of  its  own  decay, 
and  by  a  curious  irony  the  force  that  should  still 
keep  it  together  was  derived  not  from  its  own 
strength,  but  from  the  Jealousies  of  the  Euro- 
pean Powers  among  themselves,  who  would  will- 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS  19 

ingly  have  dismembered  it,  but  feared  the  quar- 
rels that  would  surely  result  from  the  appor- 
tionment of  its  territories.  The  Ottoman  Em- 
pire from  then  onwards  has  owed  its  existence 
to  its  enemies. 

Its  weakness  lay  in  itself,  for  it  was  very 
loosely  knit  together,  and  no  bond,  whether  of 
blood  or  religion  or  tongue,  bound  to  it  the 
assembly  of  Christian  and  Jewish  and  non- 
Moslem  races  of  which  it  was  so  largely  com- 
posed. The  Empire  never  grew  (as,  for  in- 
stance, the  British  Empire  grew)  by  the  emigra- 
tion and  settlement  of  the  Osmanli  stock  in  the 
territories  it  absorbed:  it  never  gave,  it  only 
took.  From  the  beginning  right  up  to  the  last 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  has  been  a 
military  despotism,  imposing  itself  on  unwill- 
ing and  alien  tribes  whom  it  drained  of  their 
blood,  and  then  left  in  neglect  until  some  fur- 
ther levy  was  needed.  None  of  its  conquered 
peoples  was  ever  given  a  share  in  the  govern- 
ment; they  were  left  unorganised  and,  so  to 
speak,  undigested  elements  under  the  Power 
which  had  forced  them  into  subjection,  and  one 
by  one  the  whole  of  the  European  peoples  in- 
cluded in  that  uncemented  tyranny  have  passed 
from  under  Turkish  control.  Turkey  in  Europe 
has  dwindled  to  a  strip  along  the  Bosporus  to 


so  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

the  Sea  of  Marmora  and  the  Dardanelles,  Egypt 
has  been  lost,  Tripoli  also,  and  the  only  force 
that,  for  the  last  hundred  years  has  kept  alive 
in  Europe  the  existence  of  that  monstrous  an- 
achronism has  been  the  strange  political  phe- 
nomenon, now  happily  extinct,  called  the  Bal- 
ance of  Power.  No  one  of  the  Great  Powers, 
from  fear  of  the  complications  that  would  ensue, 
could  risk  the  expulsion  of  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment from  Constantinople,  and  there  all  through 
the  nineteenth  century  it  has  been  maintained 
lest  the  Key  of  the  Black  Sea,  which  unlocked 
the  bolts  that  barred  Russia's  development  into 
the  Mediterranean,  should  lead  to  such  a  war 
as  we  are  now  passing  through.  That  policy, 
for  the  present,  has  utterly  defeated  its  own 
ends,  for  the  key  is  in  the  pockets  of  Prussia. 
But  all  through  that  century,  though  the  Powers 
maintained  Turkey  there,  they  helped  to  liber- 
ate, or  saw  liberate  themselves,  the  various 
Christian  kingdoms  in  Europe  over  which  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  Turkey  ex- 
ercised a  military  despotism.  They  weakened 
her  in  so  far  as  they  could,  but  they  one  and  all 
refused  to  let  her  die,  and  above  all  refused  to 
give  her  that  stab  in  the  heart  which  would 
have  been  implied  in  her  expulsion  from  Con- 
stantinople. 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS   21 
r  - 

For  centuries  from  the  first  appearance  of  the 
Osmanlis  in  north-west  Asia  Minor  down  to  the 
reign  of  Abdul  Hamid,  the  Empire  maintained 
itself,  with  alternate  bouts  of  vigour  and  re- 
lapses, on  the  general  principle  of  drawing  its 
strength  from  its  subject  peoples.  Internally, 
from  whatever  standpoint  we  view  it,  whether 
educational,  economic,  or  industrial,  it  has  had 
the  worst  record  of  any  domination  known  to 
history.  Rich  in  mineral  wealth,  possessed  of 
lands  that  were  once  the  granary  of  the  world, 
watered  by  amazing  rivers,  and  with  its  strat- 
egic position  on  the  Mediterranean  that  holds 
the  master-key  of  the  Black  Sea  in  its  hands,  it 
has  remained  the  most  barbaric  and  least  pro- 
gressive of  all  states.  Its  roads  and  means  of 
communication  remained  up  till  the  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  much  as  they  had  been 
in  the  days  of  Osman;  except  along  an  insig- 
nificant strip  of  sea-coast  railways  were  non- 
existent; it  was  bankrupt  in  finance  and  in 
morals,  and  did  not  contain  a  single  seed  that 
might  ripen  into  progress  or  civilisation.  Mes- 
opotamia was  once  the  most  fertile  of  all  lands, 
capable  of  supporting  not  itself  alone,  but  half 
the  civilised  world:  nowadays,  under  the  stew- 
ardship of  the  Turk,  it  has  been  suffered  to  be- 
come a  desert  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year 


22  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

and  an  impracticable  swamp  for  the  remainder. 
Where  great  cities  flourished,  where  once  was 
reared  the  pride  of  Babylon  and  of  Nineveh, 
there  huddle  the  squalid  huts  of  fever-stricken 
peasants,  scarce  able  to  gain  their  half- starved 
living  from  the  soil  that  once  supported  in  lux- 
ury and  pomp  the  grandeur  of  metropolitan 
cities.  The  ancient  barrages,  the  canals,  the 
systems  of  irrigation  were  all  allowed  to  silt  up 
and  become  useless ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  you  would  not  find  in  all  Mesopo- 
tamia an  agricultural  implement  that  was  in  any 
way  superior  to  the  ploughs  and  the  flails  of 
more  than  two  thousand  years  ago.  But  so  long 
as  there  was  a  palace-guard  about  the  gates  to 
secure  the  safety  of  the  Sultan  and  his  corrupt 
military  oligarchy,  so  long  as  there  were  houris 
to  divert  their  leisure,  tribute  of  youths  to  swell 
their  armies,  and  taxes  wrung  from  starving 
subjects  to  maintain  their  pomp,  there  was  not 
one  of  those  who  held  the  reins  of  government 
who  cared  the  flick  of  an  eyelash  for  the  needs 
of  the  nations  on  whom  the  Empire  rested,  for 
the  cultivation  of  its  soil  that  would  yield  a 
hundred-fold  to  the  skilled  husbandman,  or  for 
the  exploitation  and  development  of  its  internal 
wealth.  While  there  was  left  in  the  emaciated 
carcase  of  the  Turkish  Empire  enough  live  tis- 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS  23 

sue  for  the  cancerous  Government  to  grow  fat 
on,  it  gave  not  one  thought  to  the  welfare  of  all 
those  races  on  whom  it  had  fastened  itself. 
Province  after  province  of  its  European  domin- 
ions might  be  lost  to  it,  but  the  Balance  of 
Power  still  kept  the  Sultan  on  his  throne,  and 
left  the  peoples  of  Asia  Minor  and  Syria  at  his 
mercy.  They  were  largely  of  alien  religion  and 
of  alien  tongue,  and  their  individual  weakness 
was  his  strength.  Neglect,  and  the  decay  conse- 
quent on  neglect,  was  the  lot  of  all  who  lan- 
guished under  that  abominable  despotism. 

With  the  accession  in  1876  of  Abdul  Hamid, 
of  cursed  memory,  there  dawned  on  the  doomed 
subject  peoples  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  a  day  of 
bloodier  import  than  any  yet.  The  year  before 
and  during  that  year  had  occurred  the  Bul- 
garian atrocities  and  massacres,  and  the  word 
** massacre"  lingered  and  made  music  in  Abdul 
Hamid 's  brain.  He  said  it  over  to  himself  and 
dwelt  upon  it,  and  meditated  on  the  nature  and 
possibilities  of  massacre.  The  troubles  which 
massacre  had  calmed  had  arisen  before  his  ac- 
cession out  of  the  establishment  of  the  Bul- 
garian Exarchate,  which  corresponded  to  the 
Greek  Patriarchate,  and  was  given  power  over 
districts  and  peoples  whom  the  Greeks  justly 
considered  to  belong  to  them  by  blood  and  re- 


24  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ligion.  Greek  armed  bands  came  into  collision 
with  Bulgarian  bands,  and  in  order  to  calm 
these  disturbances  by  thoroughly  effectual 
means,  irregular  Turkish  troops  were  sent  into 
Bulgaria,  charged  with  the  command  to  "stop 
the  row, ' '  but  with  no  other  instructions.  Indis- 
criminate killing,  with  all  the  passions  and  hor- 
rors that  bloodshed  evokes  in  the  half -civilised, 
followed,  and  there  was  no  more  trouble  just 
then  in  the  disturbed  districts,  for  there  was 
nqne  to  make  trouble.  In  1876  Abdul  Aziz  was 
deposed  by  a  group  of  king-makers  under  Mid- 
hat  Pasha,  Murad  v.  reigned  shadow-like  for 
three  months,  and  during  the  same  year  Abdul 
Hamid  was  finally  selected  to  fill  the  throne,  and 
stand  forth  as  the  Shadow  of  God.  It  was  a 
disturbed  and  tottering  inheritance  to  which  he 
succeeded,  riddled  with  the  dry-rot  of  corrup- 
tion, but  the  inheritor  proved  himself  equal  to 
the  occasion. 

For  a  little  while  he  was  all  abroad,  and  at 
the  bidding  of  Midhat,  who  had  placed  him  on 
the  throne,  he  summoned  a  kind  of  representa- 
tive Turkish  Parliament,  by  way  of  imbuing  the 
Great  Powers  with  the  idea  that  he  was  an  en- 
lightened Shadow  of  God  bent  on  reform.  This 
parody  of  a  Parliament  lasted  but  a  short  time : 
it  was  no  more  than  a  faint,  dissolving  magic- 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS   25 

lantern  picture.  In  the  spring  of  1877  Rumania, 
under  Russian  encouragement,  broke  away  from 
Turkish  rule.  Turkey  declared  war  on  Russia, 
and  in  1878  found  herself  utterly  defeated.  At 
Adrianople  was  drawn  up  the  Treaty  of  San 
Stefano,  creating  an  independent  Bulgarian 
state,  and,  in  the  opinion  of  Great  Britain  and 
Germany,  giving  Russia  far  greater  influence  in 
the  Balkan  Peninsula  than  was  agreeable  to  that 
disastrous  supporter  of  Turkey,  the  Balance  of 
Power.  In  consequence  the  Treaty  of  San 
Stefano  was  superseded  by  the  Treaty  of 
Berlin. 

In  those  arrangements  Abdul  Hamid  had  no 
voice,  but  he  was  well  content  to  sit  quiet,  think 
about  what  was  to  be  done  with  what  was  left 
him,  and  thank  his  waning  crescent  that  once 
again  the  Balance  of  Power  had  secured  Con- 
stantinople for  him,  leaving  him  free  to  deal 
with  his  Asiatic  dominions,  and  such  part  of 
Europe  as  was  left  him,  as  he  thought  fit.  He 
could  safely  trust  that  he  would  never  be  ejected 
from  his  throne  by  a  foreign  Power,  and  all  he 
need  do  was  to  make  himself  safe  against  in- 
ternal disturbances  and  revolutions  which 
might  upset  him.  And  it  was  then  that  he  begot 
in  the  womb  of  his  cold  and  cunning  brain  a 
policy  that  was  all  his  own,  except  in  so  far  as 


26  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

the  Bulgarian  atrocities,  consequent  on  feuds 
between  Bulgars  and  Greeks,  may  be  considered 
the  father  of  that  hideous  birth.  But  it  was  he 
who  suckled  and  nourished  it,  it  was  from  his 
brain  that  it  emerged,  full-grown  and  in  panoply 
of  armour,  as  from  the  brain  of  Olympian  Zeus 
came  Pallas  Athene.  This  new  policy  was  in 
flat  contradiction  of  all  the  previous  policy,  as 
he  had  received  it  from  his  predecessors,  of 
strengthening  Turkey  by  tributes  of  man-power 
from  his  subject  tribes,  but  it  would,  he  thought, 
have  the  same  result  of  keeping  the  Turk  su- 
preme among  the  alien  elements  of  the  Empire. 
Times  had  changed;  it  behoved  him  to  change 
the  methods  which  hitherto  had  held  together 
his  hapless  inheritance. 

Now  Abdul  Hamid  was  not  in  any  sense  a 
wise  man,  and  the  ability  which  has  been  at- 
tributed to  him,  in  view  of  the  manner  in  which 
he  successfully  defied  the  civilisations  of  Eu- 
rope, is  based  on  premisses  altogether  false. 
He  never  really  defied  Europe  at  all ;  he  always 
yielded,  secure  in  his  belief  that  Europe  in  the 
shape  of  the  Balance  of  Power,  was  unanimous 
in  keeping  him  where  he  was.  He  never  even 
risked  being  turned  out  of  Constantinople,  for 
he  knew — none  better — that  all  Europe  insisted 
on  retaining  him  there.     As  regards  wisdom. 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS    27 

there  was  never  a  greater  fool,  but  as  regards 
cunning  there  was  never  a  greater  fox.  He  had 
a  brain  that  was  absolutely  impervious  to  large 
ideas :  the  notion  of  consolidating  and  strength- 
ening his  Empire  by  ameliorating  its  internal 
conditions,  by  bringing  it  within  speaking  dis- 
tance of  the  influence  of  civilisation  and  prog- 
ress, by  taking  advantage  of  and  developing  its 
immense  natural  resources,  by  employing  the 
brains  and  the  industry  of  his  subject  races, 
seems  never  to  have  entered  his  head.  He  could 
easily  have  done  all  this :  there  was  not  a  Power 
in  Europe  that  would  not  have  lent  him  a  help- 
ing hand  in  development  and  reform,  in  the 
establishment  of  a  solvent  state,  in  aiding  the 
condition  of  the  peoples  over  whom  he  ruled. 
In  whatever  he  did,  provided  that  it  furthered 
the  welfare  of  his  subjects,  whether  Turk,  Ar- 
henian,  or  Arab,  the  whole  Concert  of  Europe 
Would  have  provided  him  with  cash,  with  mis- 
sionaries, with  engineers,  and  all  the  resources 
of  the  arts  and  sciences  of  peace  and  of  prog- 
ress. But  being  a  felon,  with  crime  and  cun- 
ning to  take  the  place  of  wisdom,  he  preferred 
to  develop  his  Empire  on  his  own  original  lines. 
In  Europe  he  was  but  suffered  to  exist.  There 
remained  Asia. 

The  policy  of  previous  Osmanli  rulers  has  al- 


28  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ready  been  roughly  defined.  They  strengthened 
themselves  and  the  military  Turkish  despotism 
round  them  by  absorbing  the  manhood  of  the 
tribes  over  which  they  had  obtained  dominion. 
Abdul  Hamid  reversed  that  policy ;  he  strength- 
ened the  Turkish  supremacy,  not  by  drawing 
into  it  the  manhood  of  his  subject  peoples,  but 
by  destroying  that  manhood.  In  proportion,  so 
his  foxlike  brain  reasoned,  as  his  alien  subjects 
were  weak,  so  were  the  Turks  strong.  A  con- 
sistent weakening  of  alien  nations  would 
strengthen  the  hold  of  those  who  governed  the 
Ottoman  Empire.  It  was  as  if  a  man  suffered 
from  gout  in  his  foot:  he  could  get  rid  of  the 
gout  by  wholesome  living,  the  result  of  which 
would  be  that  his  foot  ceased  to  trouble  him. 
But  the  plan  which  he  adopted  was  to  cause  his 
foot  to  mortify  by  process  of  inhuman  savagery. 
When  it  was  dead  it  would  trouble  him  no 
longer. 

He  was  well  aware  that  the  Turkish  people 
only  comprised  some  forty  per  cent,  of  the  popu- 
lation of  the  Turkish  Empire :  numerically  they 
were  weaker  than  the  alien  peoples  who  com- 
posed the  rest  of  it.  Something  had  to  be  done 
to  bring  the  governing  Power  up  to  such  a  pro- 
portionate strength  as  should  secure  its  suprem- 
acy, and  the  most  convenient  plan  was  to  weaken 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS   29 

the  alien  elements.  The  scheme,  though  yet  in- 
choate, had  been  tried  with  success  in  the  case 
of  the  Bulgarians  and  Greeks,  and  to  test  it 
further  he  stirred  up  Albanians  against  the  in- 
habitants of  Old  Servia  with  gratifying  results. 
They  weakened  each  other,  and  he  further  weak- 
ened them  both  by  the  employment  of  Turkish 
troops  in  Macedonia  to  quell  the  disturbances 
which  he  had  himself  fomented.  There  were 
massacres  and  atrocities,  and  no  more  trouble 
just  then  from  Macedonia.  Having  thus  tested 
his  plan  and  found  no  flaw  in  it,  he  settled  to 
adopt  it.  But  European  combinations  did  not 
really  much  interest  him,  for  he  was  aware  that 
the  Great  Powers,  to  whose  sacred  Balance  he 
owed  the  permanence  of  his  throne,  would  not 
tolerate  interference  with  European  peoples, 
and  he  turned  his  attention  to  Asia  Minor. 
There  were  excrescences  there  which  he  could 
not  absorb,  but  which  might  be  destroyed.  He 
could  use  the  knife  on  living  tissues  which  the 
impaired  digestion  of  the  Ottoman  Empire 
could  not  assimilate.  So  he  hit  on  this  fresh 
scheme,  which  his  hellish  cunning  devised  with 
a  matchless  sense  of  the  adaptation  of  the  means 
to  the  end,  and  he  created  (though  he  did  not 
live  to  perfect)  a  new  policy  that  reversed  the 
traditions  of  five  hundred  years.     That  is  no 


80  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

light  task  to  undertake,  and  when  we  consider 
that  since  his  deposition,  now  nine  years  ago, 
that  policy  has  reaped  results  undreamed  of 
perhaps  by  him,  we  can  see  how  far-sighted  his 
cunning  was.  To-day  it  is  being  followed  out 
by  the  very  combination  that  deposed  him;  his 
aims  have  been  fully  justified,  and  for  that  pre- 
cise reason  we  are  right  to  classify  him  among 
the  abhorred  of  mankind.  He  had  an  oppor- 
tunity such  as  is  given  to  the  few,  and  he  made 
the  utmost  of  it,  even  as  his  greater  successor 
on  the  throne  of  Turkey  for  the  present,  namely 
Wilhelm  ii.  of  Prussia,  has  done,  in  the  service 
of  the  devil.  ''Well  done,  thou  good  and  faith- 
ful servant,"  must  surely  have  been  his  well- 
deserved  welcome,  when  he  left  the  hell  he  had 
made  on  earth  for  another. 

Of  all  his  subjects  the  Armenians  were  the 
most  progressive,  the  most  industrious,  the  most 
capable.  They  therefore  contributed,  according 
to  that  perverted  foxlike  mind,  one  of  the  great- 
est menaces  to  the  stability  of  his  throne,  which 
henceforth  should  owe  its  strength  to  the  weak- 
ness of  those  it  governed.  They,  as  all  the 
world  knows,  are  a  peaceful  Christian  people, 
and  it  was  against  them  that  Abdul  Hamid  di- 
rected the  policy  which  he  had  tested  in  Europe. 
The  instruments  he  employed  to  put  it  in  force 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS    31 
fa 

were  the  Kurds,  a  turbulent  shepherd  race 
inarching  mth  and  mixed  up  among  the  Ar- 
menians. By  this  means  he  had  the  excuse 
ready  that  these  massacres  were  local  disturb- 
ances among  remote  and  insubordinate  tribes, 
one  of  whom,  however,  the  Kurds,  he  armed 
with  modern  rifles  and  caused  to  be  instructed 
in  some  elementary  military  training.  Their 
task  was  to  murder  Armenians,  their  pay  was 
the  privilege  to  rape  their  girls  and  their 
women,  and  to  rob  the  houses  of  the  men  they 
had  killed.  The  Armenians  resisted  with  at 
first  some  small  success,  upon  which  Abdul 
Hamid  reinforced  the  Kurds  with  regular 
troops,  and  caused  it  to  be  proclaimed  that  this 
was  a  war  of  Moslems  against  the  infidel,  a 
Holy  War.  Moslem  fanaticism,  ever  smoulder- 
ing and  ready  to  burst  into  flames,  blazed  high, 
and  a  fury  of  massacres  broke  forth  against  all 
Armenians,  east  and  west,  north  and  south. 
The  streets  of  Constantinople  ran  with  their 
blood,  and  before  Abdul  Hamid  was  obliged  by 
foreign  civilised  Powers  to  stop  those  holo- 
causts, he  had  so  decimated  the  race  that  not 
for  at  least  a  generation  would  they  conceivably 
be  a  menace  again  even  to  that  zealous  guardian 
of  the  supremacy  in  its  own  dominions  of  the 
Ottoman     power.       Very     unwillingly,     when 


32  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

obliged  to  do  so,  lie  whistled  off  his  bands  of 
Kurds,  and  dismissed  them :  unwillingly,  too,  he 
gave  orders  that  the  Armenian  hunts  which  had 
so  pleasantly  diverted  the  sportsmen  of  Con- 
stantinople, must  be  abandoned:  then  was  de- 
creed a  ''close  time"  for  Armenians,  the  shoot- 
ing season  was  over.  There  is  no  exaggeration 
in  this :  eye-witnesses  have  recorded  how  at  the 
close  of  the  business  day  in  Constantinople, 
shooting  parties  used  literally  to  go  out,  and 
beat  the  coverts  of  tenement  houses  for  Ar- 
menians, of  whom  there  were  at  that  time  in 
Constantinople  some  150,000.  But  when  Abdul 
Hamid  had  finished  his  sport,  I  do  not  think 
more  than  80,000  at  the  most  survived.  These 
were  saved  by  the  protests  of  Europe,  and  per- 
haps by  the  knowledge  that  if  all  the  Armenians 
were  killed,  there  could  never  be  any  more 
shooting.  The  Kurds  also  had  lost  a  consider- 
able number  of  men,  and  that  was  far  from  dis- 
pleasing to  the  yellow-faced  butcher  of  Yildiz. 
A  little  blood-letting  among  those  turbulent 
Kurds  was  not  at  all  a  bad  thing. 

Here,  then,  we  see  defined  and  at  work  the 
new  Ottoman  policy  with  regard  to  its  peoples. 
Hitherto,  it  had  been  sufficient  to  take  from 
them  its  fill  of  man-power,  and  leave  the  tribe 
in  question  to  its  own  devices.    There  was  no 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS    33 

objection  whatever  to  its  developing  the  re- 
sources of  its  territory,  to  its  increasing  in 
prosperity  and  in  population.  Indeed  the  cen- 
tral Power  was  quite  pleased  that  it  should  do 
so,  for  when  next  the  gathering  of  taxes  and 
youths  came  round  the  collectors  would  find  a 
creditable  harvest  awaiting  them.  Such  a  tribe 
received  no  encouragement  or  help  from  the 
Government ;  that  would  have  been  too  much  to 
expect,  but  as  long  as  it  kept  quiet  and  obedient 
it  might,  without  interference,  prosper  as  well 
as  it  could.  But  now,  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  all  that  was  changed;  in- 
stead of  a  policy  of  neglect  there  was  substi- 
tuted a  policy  of  murder.  The  state  no  longer 
considered  itself  secure  when  in  various  parts 
of  its  dominions  its  subjects  showed  themselves 
progressive  and  industrious.  They  had  to  be 
kept  down,  and  clearly  the  most  efficient  way  of 
keeping  people  down  was  killing  them.  Let  it 
not  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  either  the 
first  massacre,  or  any  that  followed,  was  the 
result  of  local  disturbances  and  fanaticism.  It 
was  nothing  of  the  sort :  each  was  arranged  and 
planned  at  Constantinople,  as  the  official  means, 
invented  by  the  arch-butcher,  Abdul  Hamid,  of 
maintaining  in  power  the  most  de\dlish  des- 
potism  that   has    ever    disgraced   the    world. 


34  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Something  had  to  be  done  to  prevent  the  alien 
tribes  in  Asia  slipping  out  of  the  noose  of  Otto- 
man strangulation,  even  as  the  European  tribes 
had  done,  and  forming  themselves  into  separate 
and  independent  states.  A  ruler  with  progres- 
sive ideas,  one  who  had  any  perception  of  the 
internal  prosperity  which  alone  can  render  an 
empire  stable,  would  have  made  the  attempt  to 
weld  his  loose  and  wavering  domination  to- 
gether by  encouraging  and  working  for  the 
prosperity  of  its  component  peoples,  so  that  he 
might,  though  late  in  the  day,  give  birth  to  a 
Turkey  that  was  strong,  because  its  citizens 
were  prosperous  and  content.  Not  so  did  Abdul 
Hamid ;  the  Turkey  that  he  sought  to  establish 
was  merely  to  be  strong  because  he  had  bat- 
tered into  a  blood-stained  pulp  the  most  pro- 
gressive and  the  most  industrious  of  the  alien 
peoples  over  whom  he  ruled. 

It  is  significant  that,  while  yet  the  blood  of 
the  murdered  Christians  was  scarcely  washed 
from  the  streets  of  Constantinople,  the  Emperor 
Wilhelm  ii.  visited  his  brother-sovereign  at 
Yildiz,  after  making  his  tour  throughout  the 
Holy  Land.  The  two  can  hardly,  in  their  inti- 
mate conversations,  have  completely  avoided 
the  subject  of  the  massacres ;  but  after  all,  that 
was  not  such  an  unmanageably  awkward  topic, 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS    35 

u — ■ 

for  Wilhelm  ii.  could  tactfully  have  reminded 
Abdul  Hamid  that  his  own  throne  also  was 
based  on  the  murderous  progress  of  the  Teu- 
tonic Knights.  Then  there  was  the  war  between 
Turkey  and  Greece  only  lately  concluded  to  dis- 
cuss, and  there  again — for  the  Emperor's  sister 
was  Crown  Princess  of  Greece — conversation 
must  have  been  a  shade  difficult.  Altogether,  in 
spite  of  the  Emperor's  lifelong  desire  to  visit 
the  Holy  Places  in  Palestine,  it  was  an  odd  mo- 
ment for  a  Christian  monarch  to  visit  the  butcher 
of  Constantinople.  But  the  truth  is  that  Wil- 
helm II.  had  a  very  strong  reason  for  going  to 
see  his  brother,  for  the  fruit  of  German  policy 
in  Turkey  was  already  ripening  and  swelling  on 
the  tree,  and  the  minor  disadvantages  of  visit- 
ing this  murderous  tyrant  while  still  his  hands 
were  red  with  blood  was  more  than  compensated 
for  by  the  advantages  of  having  a  heart-to- 
heart  talk  with  him  on  other  subjects.  Ger- 
many had  already  begun  her  peaceful  penetra- 
tion, and  the  real  motive  of  the  Emperor's  visit 
was,  after  swords  and  orders  had  been  ex- 
changed, to  make  the  definite  request  that  bodies 
of  colonising  Germans  should  be  allowed  to  set- 
tle on  the  Sultan's  dominions  in  Asia  Minor, 
and  a  hint  no  doubt  was  conveyed  that  there 
would  be  plenty  of  room  for  them  now  that 


S6  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

there  were  so  many  Armenian  farms  unfortu- 
nately without  a  master.  But,  like  Uriah  Heep, 
the  Emperor  had  attempted  to  pluck  the  fruit 
before  it  was  ripe,  or,  to  use  a  more  exact  sim- 
ile, before  he  was  tall  enough  to  reach  it.  In 
vain  he  represented  to  Abdul  Hamid  the  im- 
mense advantages  which  would  result  to  Turkey 
by  the  establishment  of  those  Gott-like  German 
settlers  in  Asia  Minor.  Out  of  his  colossal 
egalo-megalomania,  of  which  we  know  more 
now,  he  thought  that  any  request  which  the  All- 
Highest  should  deign  to  make  must  instantly  be 
granted.  But  he  met  with  a  perfectly  fiat  re- 
fusal, and  the  baffled  All-Highest  left  Con- 
stantinople in  an  exceedingly  bad  temper,  which 
quite  undid  all  the  good  that  the  balm  in  Gilead 
and  the  sacred  associations  of  Jerusalem  had 
done  him. 

It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  the  Pan-Islamic 
merriment  with  which  Abdul  Hamid  must  have 
viewed  the  indignant  exit  of  his  Christian 
brother,  who  had  come  such  a  long  way  to  see 
him,  and  was  so  tactful  about  the  Armenian 
atrocities.  He  might  perhaps — for  those  Chris- 
tians were  very  odd  pigs — have  expressed  hor- 
ror or  remonstrance.  Not  at  all:  he  was  much 
too  anxious  to  get  his  request  granted,  to  make 
himself  disagreeable.     But  did  his  Christian 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  OLD  TURKS  3T 

brother  really  think  that  all  those  massacres 
over  which  Abdul  Hamid  had  spent  so  much 
time  and  money,  had  been  arranged  in  order  to 
settle  those  nasty  progressive  Germans  in  the 
lands  that  had  been  so  carefully  depopulated? 
Why,  the  whole  point  of  them  had  been  that  the 
Armenians  were  too  progressive  and  prosper- 
ous, thus  constituting  a  menace  to  the  central 
Government,  and  certainly  Abdul  Hamid  was 
not  meaning  to  put  in  their  place  settlers  even 
more  progressive  and  with  a  stronger  backing 
behind  them.  So  off  went  the  All-Highest  back 
home  again,  very  much  vexed  with  Abdul 
Hamid,  and  possibly  (if  that  was  not  sacri- 
legious) with  himself  for  having  been  in  too 
great  a  hurry.  There  was  more  spadework  to 
be  done  yet  before  Turkey  was  ripe  for  open 
and  avowed  colonisation  by  the  Fatherland. 

The  episode,  strictly  historical,  is  of  a  certain 
importance,  for  it  shows  the  date  at  which  Wil- 
helm  II.  thought  that  the  time  had  come  for 
Germans  to  colonise  Turkey.  The  peaceful 
penetration  (which  now  amounts  to  perfora- 
tion) was  even  then  pretty  far  advanced.  But 
Abdul  Hamid  seems  to  have  seen  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  request,  and  for  some  little  while 
after  that  German  influence  had  a  certain  set- 
back in  Turkey.    The  date  of  this  marks  an  era, 


S8  C  RESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 


and  Germany,  ^'deep  patient  Germany,"  set  to 
work  again,  in  no  way  discouraged,  to  set  her 
cancer-nippers  in  the  cancer  that  already  had 
begun  to  eat  the  live  tissues  round  it. 


CHAPTER  n 

The  Theoby  of  the  New  Tubes 

In  the  year  1908  a  military  group  in  Constanti- 
nople, styling  itself  the  "Young  Turk"  party, 
seized  and  deposed  Abdul  Hamid,  and  shut  him 
up  at  Salonika,  there  to  spend  the  remainder  of 
his  infamous  days.  They  put  forth  a  Liberal 
progranune  of  reformation,  one  that  earned 
them  at  the  moment  the  sympathy  of  civilised 
Europe  (including  Germany),  and  the  Balance 
of  Power  very  mistakenly  and  prematurely 
heaved  a  sigh  of  relief.  For  upwards  of  a  cen- 
tury it  had  maintained  in  Constantinople  the 
corrupt  and  bloody  autocracy  of  the  Sultans, 
fearing  the  European  quarrels  that  would  at- 
tend the  dismemberment  of  that  charnel-house 
of  decay  known  as  the  Ottoman  Empire,  and 
now  (just  for  the  moment)  it  seemed  as  if  a 
sudden  rally  had  come  to  the  Sick  Man,  and  he 
showed  signs  of  returning  animation  and  whole- 
some vitality.  The  policy  of  the  Powers,  after 
a  century  of  failure,  looked  as  if  it  was  justify- 
ing itself,  and  they  were  full  of  congratulations 

39 


40  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

towards  Turkey  and  each  other.  But  never,  in 
the  whole  century  of  their  pusillanimous  cack- 
lings,  had  they  made  a  greater  mistake. 

Whether  the  Young  Turks  ever  meant  well  or 
not,  whether  there  was  or  was  not  a  grain  of 
sincerity  in  this  profession  of  their  policy,  is  a 
disputed  question.  There  are  those  who  say 
that  originally  they  were  prompted  by  patriotic 
and  high-minded  aims,  when  they  proclaimed 
their  object  of  "Organisation,"  and  of  reform. 
But  all  are  agreed  that  it  matters  very  little 
what  their  original  aims  were,  so  speedily  did 
their  Liberal  intentions  narrow  down  to  an  Otto- 
manisation  such  as  Abdul  Hamid  had  aimed  at, 
but  had  been  unable  to  accomplish  before  his 
evil  sceptre  ceased  to  sway  the  destinies  of  his 
kingdom.  In  any  case  this  programme  earned 
its  authors  the  sympathy  of  Europe,  and  prob- 
ably this,  and  no  more  than  this,  prompted  it. 
They  wished  to  establish  themselves,  unques- 
tioned and  undisturbed,  and  did  so ;  and  I  do  not 
think  we  shall  be  far  wrong  if  we  take  the  orig- 
inal Young  Turk  programme  about  as  seriously 
as  we  took  the  parody  of  a  Parliament  with 
which  Abdul  Hamid  opened  (as  with  a  bless- 
ing) his  atrocious  reign.  The  very  next  year 
(1909)  they  permitted  (if  they  did  not  arrange) 
the  Armenian  massacres  at  Adana,  and  the  Bal- 


1 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  41 

ance  of  Power  began  faintly  to  wonder  whether 
the  Young  Turks  in  their  deposition  of  Abdul 
Hamid  had  not  slain  an  asp  and  hatched  a  cock- 
atrice. Given  that  their  aims  originally  were 
sincere,  we  can  but  marvel  at  the  swiftness  of 
the  corruption  which  in  little  more  than  a  year 
had  begun  to  lead  them  not  into  paths  of  reform 
and  Liberal  policy,  but  along  the  road  towards 
which  the  butcher  they  had  deposed  had  pointed 
the  way.  It  must  have  made  Abdul  Hamid  gnaw 
his  nails  and  shake  impotent  hands  to  see  those 
who  had  torn  him  from  his  throne  so  soon  pur- 
suing the  very  policy  which  he  invented,  and  to 
which  he  nominally  owed  his  dethronement. 
Strange,  too,  was  it  that  his  overthrow  should 
come  from  the  very  quarter  to  which  he  looked 
for  security,  for  it  was  on  the  army  that  each 
Sultan  in  turn  had  most  relied  for  the  stability 
of  his  throne.  But  Abdul  Hamid,  in  order,  per- 
haps, to  deal  more  effectually  with  the  subject 
races  he  wished  to  exterminate,  had  introduced 
a  system  of  foreign  training  for  the  officers  of 
his  army,  a  course  of  Potsdam  efficiency,  and  it 
was  just  they,  on  whom  Sultans  from  time  im- 
memorial had  relied,  who  knocked  the  prop  of 
the  army  away  from  him.  Though  publicly,  for 
the  edification  of  Europe,  his  deposersprofessed 
a  Liberal  policy,  it  was  not  on  account  of  Ar- 


42  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

menian  massacres  that  they  turned  him  off  his 
throne,  but  because  of  the  muddle  and  corrup- 
tion and  debility  of  his  rule.  Herein  we  may 
easily  trace  the  hand  of  Germany,  no  longer 
publicly  beckoning  as  when  Wilhelm  ii.,  just 
after  the  first  Armenian  massacres,  made  his 
request  of  the  Sultan  for  the  establishment  in 
Turkey  of  German  colonists,  but  working  under- 
ground, sapping  and  mining  like  a  mole.  For 
Germany,  her  mind  already  fixed  on  securing 
Turkey  as  an  instrument  of  her  Eastern  policy, 
wanted  a  strong  Turkey,  and  without  doubt  de- 
sired to  bring  an  end  to  the  disorganisation  and 
decay  of  the  Empire,  and  create  and  at  the  same 
time  interpenetrate  an  efficient  state  that  should 
be  useful  to  her.  We  may  take  it  for  granted 
that  she,  like  the  rest  of  Europe,  welcomed  any 
sign  of  regeneration  in  the  Ottoman  Empire, 
but  there  was  an  ulterior  purpose  behind  that. 
Turkey,  already  grasped  by  the  Prussian  hand, 
must  be  in  that  hand  a  weapon  fit  for  use,  a 
blade  on  which  she  could  rely.  She  strength- 
ened the  Turkish  army  by  the  introduction  of 
Prussian  discipline,  and  worked  on  good  ma- 
terial Already  she  has  realised  her  ambition 
in  this  respect,  and  now  controls  the  material 
which  she  then  worked  on. 
The  troubled  years  of  the  Balkan  wars  which 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  43 

followed  this  false  dawn,  coupled  with  the  loss 
of  all  the  territory  which  remained  to  the  Otto- 
man Empire  in  Europe,  with  the  exception  of 
Thrace,  caused  an  immediate  reaction  from  the 
open-minded  policy  of  the  Young  Turks,  if  we 
decide  to  credit  them  at  the  outset  with  a  sin- 
cere purpose.  Organisation  by  a  slightly  dif- 
ferent spelling  became  Ottomanisation,  and  the 
aims  of  the  Young  Turks  were  identified  with 
those  of  the  Nationalist  party  which  followed 
out  and  developed  into  a  finished  and  super- 
fiendish  policy  the  dreams  of  Abdul  Hamid.  He, 
as  we  have  seen,  had  invented  the  idea  of  secur- 
ing Ottoman  supremacy  in  the  Empire,  not  as 
before  by  absorption  of  the  strength  of  its  sub- 
ject peoples,  but  by  their  extermination,  and 
this  formed  part  of  the  new  programme  which 
was  to  be  more  efficiently  administered.  Al- 
ready, in  1909,  the  experimental  massacre  at 
Adana  took  place,  and  the  Young  Turk  party, 
with  its  possibly  Liberal  aims,  had  become  a 
party  that  had  as  its  main  object  a  system  of 
tyranny  and  murder  such  as  the  world  had  never 
seen.  Simultaneously  Turkey  itself.  National- 
ist party  and  all,  became  enslaved  to  German 
influence.  Link  by  link  the  chains  were  forged 
and  the  manacles  welded  on,  and  before  the 
European  War  broke  out  in  1914,  the  incarcera- 


44  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

tion  of  Turkey  in  Germany  was  complete,  and 
Wilhelm  ii.  had  a  fine  revenge  for  the  snub  in- 
flicted on  him  by  Abdul  Hamid  when  he  pro- 
posed the  scheme  of  German  colonisation  in  the 
lands  depopulated  by  the  Armenian  massacres 
of  1895. 

From  the  first  the  aim  of  the  Nationalists, 
who  thus  formed  so  deadly  a  blend  with  the 
Young  Turk  party,  was  Ottomanisation,  or  the 
establishment  within  the  Empire  of  an  Ottoman 
domination  which  should  be  pure  and  undefiled, 
and  in  which  none  of  the  subject  peoples,  be 
they  Armenians  or  Kurds,  Arabs  or  Greeks  or 
Jews,  Christian  or  Moslem,  should  have  any 
part.  The  inception  of  the  scheme  was  no 
doubt  inspired  by  the  example  given  by  Prus- 
sia's treatment  of  the  Poles,  and  Hungary's  of 
Roumans  and  Slovaks.  But  in  thoroughness  of 
method  Prussia's  pupil  was  to  prove  Prussia's 
master,  for  it  aimed  not  merely  at  expropria- 
tion, but  extermination,  and  sought  to  become 
strong,  not  merely  by  weakening  alien  elements, 
but  by  abolishing  them.  It  did  not  set  this  out 
quite  explicitly  in  its  manifestoes  and  the  reso- 
lutions of  its  congresses,  but  two  extracts,  the 
first  from  the  proceedings  of  the  ' '  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress, ' '  held  in  Constantinople  in 
1911,  have  a  sinister  suggestiveness  about  them 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  45 

for  which  the  acts  and  measures  of  the  Com- 
mittee had  already  supplied  the  comment. 

"The  formation  of  new  parties  in  the  Cham- 
ber or  in  the  country  must  be  suppressed,  and 
the  emergence  of  new  Liberal  ideas  prevented. 
Turkey  must  become  a  really  Mohammedan 
country,  and  Moslem  influence  must  be  prepon- 
derant. Every  other  religious  propaganda 
must  be  suppressed.  .  .  .  Sooner  or  later  the 
complete  Ottomanisation  of  all  Turkish  subjects 
must  be  effected;  it  is  clear,  however,  that  this 
can  never  be  attained  by  persuasion,  but  that  we 
must  resort  to  armed  force.  .  .  .  Other  na- 
tionalities must  be  denied  the  right  of  organisa- 
tion, for  decentralisation  and  autonomy  are 
treason  to  the  Turkish  Empire." 

Could  there  be  a  completer  reversion  to  the 
policy  of  Abdul  Hamid,  than  this  formal  resolu- 
tion, passed  within  three  years  of  the  time  when 
the  Young  Turks  deposed  him!  The  conviction 
begins  to  dawn  on  one — as  it  began  to  dawn  on 
the  Balancers  of  Power — that  he  owed  his  down- 
fall not  to  his  illiberal  and  butcherous  policy, 
but  because  he  was  not  thorough  enough. 

The  second  extract,  from  a  pamphlet  by  Jelal 
Noury  Bey,  may  be  added,  which  defines  the 
policy,  not  with  regard  to  the  Christian  or  Jew- 
ish subjects  of  the  Turks,  but  with  regard  to  the 


46  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Arabs,  Moslem  by  creed,  and  the  guardians  of 
the  Holy  Cities. 

''It  is  a  peculiarly  imperious  necessity  of  our 
existence  for  us  to  Turkise  the  Arab  lands,  for 
the  particularistic  idea  of  nationality  is  awak- 
ing among  the  younger  generation  of  Arabs,  and 
already  threatens  us  with  a  great  catastrophe. 
Against  this  we  must  be  forearmed." 

The  design  of  Ottomanisation  soon  began  to 
take  practical  form.  Ottomanisation  was  to 
be  the  highest  expression  of  patriotism,  and  any 
means  which  secured  it,  massacres  such  as,  in 
1909,  had  taken  place  at  Adana,  or  the  treat- 
ment accorded  to  the  Greeks  and  Bulgarians 
who  remained  in  Thrace  after  the  Balkan  wars, 
were  in  accordance  with  the  new  ''Liberal'* 
gospel.  Thrace  was  the  only  territory  left  to 
the  Turks  in  Europe,  and  as  it  was  largely 
populated  by  Greeks  and  Bulgarians,  it  could 
not  be  considered  as  sufficiently  Ottomanised. 
A  massacre  under  the  very  eyes  of  Europe  was 
perhaps  dangerous,  so  it  sufficed  to  put  the  en- 
tire non-Turkish  population  over  the  frontier 
and  lay  hands  on  their  property.  In  fact  this 
was  the  first  of  the  "deportation"  schemes 
which,  in  1915,  proved  so  successful  with  the 
Armenians,  and  the  effect  of  it  was  that  neither 
Greeks  nor  Bulgarians  were  left  in  Thrace. 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  47 

Then  followed  the  expulsion  of  Greeks  from  the 
Mediterranean  sea-board,  but  this  was  never 
completely  carried  out  because  the  European 
war  intervened,  and  the  attention  of  the  Na- 
tionalists was  claimed  by  their  over-lord. 
Later,  as  we  shall  see,  a  further  deportation  of 
Greeks  was  begun,  but  again  that  was  stopped, 
for  Germany  saw  that  it  would  never  do  to  have 
her  Turkish  allies  murdering  settlers  of  the 
same  blood  as  those  she  hoped  would  become 
her  allies.  Of  course,  when  it  was  only  a  ques- 
tion of  Armenians  she  did  not  interfere. 

The  design,  then,  of  the  new  ''Liberal"  re- 
gime, of  which  those  three  measures,  the  mas- 
sacres at  Adana,  the  expulsion  of  Greeks  and 
Bulgarians  from  Thrace,  and  of  Greeks  from  the 
sea-board  of  the  Mediterranean,  were  early  in- 
stances, was  to  restore  the  absolute  supremacy 
of  the  Turks  in  the  Ottoman  Empire.  It  was  ob- 
vious that  the  problem  was  one  of  considerable 
difficulty,  since  the  Turks  at  the  time  composed 
only  some  forty  per  cent,  of  the  whole  popu- 
lation. They  numbered  about  8,000,000,  while 
in  the  Empire  were  included  about  7,000,000 
Arabs,  2,000,000  Greeks,  2,000,000  Armenians, 
and  3,000,000  more  of  smaller  nationalities,  such 
as  Kurds,  Druses,  and  Jews.  But  the  Turks 
were  backed  by  Germany,  and  nowadays,  since 


48  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

the  abolition  of  the  Capitulations,  which  leaves 
all  alien  races  unprotected  by  foreign  Powers, 
such  as  survive,  after  the  extermination  of  the 
Armenians,  are  completely  at  the  mercy  of  the 
Government  in  Constantinople.  All  these  peo- 
ples speak  a  different  language  from  the  Turks, 
and  have  a  different  religion,  for  the  National- 
ist party,  with  a  view  to  the  Ottomanisation  of 
the  Arabs,  have  definitely  stated  that  Arab  Mos- 
lems are  not  of  the  true  faith,  and  that  their 
own  Allah  (in  whose  name  they  subsequently 
exterminated  the  Armenians)  is  the  God  of 
Love — German  equivalent  Gott — ^whereas  the 
Arab  Allah  is  the  God  of  vengeance.  The  sin- 
ister motive  in  this  discovery  needs  no  comment, 
for  it  is  obvious  that  it  releases  the  Ottoman 
Government  from  the  prohibition  in  the  Koran, 
whereby  Moslem  may  not  fight  against  Moslem. 
Therefore  the  Arabs  were  declared  not  to  be 
true  Moslems.  Later  on,  that  motive  was  trans- 
lated into  practical  measures. 

Among  the  first  tasks  with  regard  to  the  Ar- 
abs that  faced  the  Nationalist  party  from  what 
we  may  call  the  pacific  side  of  their  mission 
was  to  substitute  the  Turkish  language  for  Ara- 
bic. Kemal  Bey,  a  Nationalist  of  Salonika,  with 
the  help  of  Ziya  Bey,  collected  round  him  a 
group  of  young  writers,  and  these  proceeded  to 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  49 

translate  the  Koran  out  of  Arabic  into  Turkish, 
and  to  publish  the  prayers  for  the  Caliphate 
in  their  own  language,  and  orders  went  out  that 
these  revised  versions  should  be  used  in  all 
mosques.  Turkish  was  to  be  the  official  lan- 
guage for  use  in  all  public  proclamations,  and, 
with  Prussian  thoroughness,  it  was  even  substi- 
tuted on  such  railway  tickets  as  had  hitherto 
been  printed  in  Arabic.  The  new  Turkish 
tongue  (Yeni  Lisan)  had  also  to  be  purged  of 
all  foreign  words,  but  here  some  difficulty  was 
experienced,  for  Persian  and  Arabic  formed  an 
enormous  percentage  in  the  language  as  hither- 
to employed,  and  the  promoters  of  this  Ottoman 
purity  of  tongue  found  themselves  left  with  a 
very  jejune  instrument  for  the  rhapsodies  of 
their  patriotic  aims.  Poets  in  especial  (for  the 
Nationalists,  like  all  well-equipped  founders  of 
romantic  movements,  had  their  bards)  found 
themselves  in  sore  straits  owing  to  the  limited 
vocabulary;  and  we  read  of  one,  Mehmed  Emin 
Bey,  who  was  forced  to  publish  his  odes  in  small 
provincial  papers,  since  no  well-established 
journal  would  admit  so  scrannel  an  expression 
of  views  however  exalted.^  But  the  translation 
of  the  Koran  was  the  greatest  linguistic  feat, 

*  This  thwarted  poet  retired  from  the  Committee  of  Union, 
and  Progress  not  long  after,  and  his  place  was  taken  by  Enver. 


60  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

— — 1 

and  Tekin  Alp,  the  most  prominent  exponent 
of  Nationalism,  refers  to  it  as  one  of  the  noblest 
tasks  undertaken  by  the  new  movement.  It  mat- 
tered not  at  all  that  by  religious  ordinance  the 
translation  of  the  Koran  into  any  other  tongue 
was  a  sin.  "The  Nationalists,"  he  tells  us, 
''have  cut  themselves  off  from  the  superstitious 
prejudice."  A  further  attempt  was  made  to 
substitute  Turkish  letters  for  Arabic  letters  in 
the  alphabet,  but  this  seems  to  have  presented 
insuperable  difficulties,  and  I  gather  that  it  has 
been  abandoned. 

The  Ottomanisation  of  religion  and  language, 
then,  was  among  the  pacific  methods  of  spread- 
ing Pan-Turkism  through  the  Empire.  A  mon- 
strous idol  was  set  up,  a  Hindenburg  idol,  in 
front  of  which  all  peoples  and  languages,  not 
Christians  alone,  but  Moslems,  were  bound  to 
prostrate  themselves.  Indeed  it  was  against 
Arabs  mainly  that  these  provisions  were  direct- 
ed, for  the  Arabs  constituted  the  most  menac- 
ing obstacle  to  the  spread  of  Ottomanisation, 
since  they  numbered  in  the  Empire  only  a  mil- 
lion less  than  the  Turks  themselves.  It  was  or- 
dained by  statute  that  no  Arab  could  have  a  seat 
on  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress,  and 
the  Cabinet  similarly  was  purged  of  any  Greek 
or  Armenian  element.    Never  any  more  must 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  51 

»^^— ^^^^^— ^■^■^^"— ^^^"^^■— — — ^^■^^^^— ^— •-^^^^^^^^^ 

there  be  new  parties  in  the  Chamber,  never  any 
more  must  Liberal  ideas  (to  champion  which  the 
New  Turk  party  had  come  into  being)  be  al- 
lowed to  prick  up  their  pernicious  heads.  For 
the  Nationalist  party,  with  whom  the  New  Turks 
were  now  identical,  had  taken  as  their  creed  all 
that  the  deposed  Abdul  Hamid  stood  for,  and 
only  differed  from  him  in  that  as  their  schemes 
developed  they  looked  forward  to  logical  conclu- 
sions far  beyond  what  he  had  ever  dreamed  of. 
But  Abdul  Hamid  may,  I  think,  be  taken  to 
be  the  true  founder  of  the  new  Nationalism :  at 
any  rate  it  was  he  who  had  first  seen  the  pos- 
sibilities of  massacre  as  a  means  of  maintain- 
ing Ottoman  supremacy.  In  the  hands  of  Na- 
tionalists that  was  to  prove  a  more  effective 
weapon  than  the  printing  of  railway  tickets  in 
Turkish.  But  already  before  the  European 
War  the  Nationalists  had  vastly  extended  his 
ideas,  and  had  seen  the  danger  of  allowing  even 
Arabs  to  have  a  standing  of  any  kind  in  the 
new  state.  Henceforth  all  subject  people  were 
to  be  rayas,  cattle,  as  in  the  old  days  of  the  Sul- 
tans who  absorbed  the  strength  of  the  aliens, 
but  did  not  exterminate  them.  But  now  the 
cattle  were  not  only  to  be  used  for  milk,  but 
were  to  be  slaughtered  when  advisable.  Till 
then  they  must  be  dumb,  or  speak  the  language 


52  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

of  their  masters  only,  for  this  alone  can  save 
them  from  the  shambles.  Ahmed  Sherif  Bey, 
a  prominent  Nationalist,  lays  this  down.  *'It 
is  the  business  of  the  Porte  to  make  the  Arabs 
forget  their  own  language,  and  to  impose  upon 
them  instead  that  of  the  nation  that  rules  them. 
If  the  Porte  loses  sight  of  this  duty,  it  will  be 
digging  its  grave  with  its  own  hands,  for  if  the 
Arabs  do  not  forget  their  language,  their  his- 
tory, and  their  customs,  they  will  seek  to  re- 
store their  ancient  empire  on  the  ruins  of  Otto- 
manism  and  of  Turkish  rule  in  Asia.'' 

Here,  then,  is  the  definite  statement  of  the 
Nationalists'  hostility  to  all  things  Arab,  and 
we  shall  see  how  they  translated  it  into  practice. 
Even  Moslems  were  but  cattle  for  them,  as  also 
were  Armenians  and  Greeks  and  Kurds.  Ar- 
menians were  doomed  to  be  the  first  complete 
sacrifice  on  the  bloody  altar  of  the  National- 
ists, and,  as  a  Turkish  gendarme  engaged  in 
that  sacrifice  said  to  a  Danish  Red  Cross  nurse, 
"First  we  kill  the  Armenians,  then  the  Greeks, 
and  then  the  Kurds."  And  if  he  had  been  a 
Progressive  Minister  he  would  certainly  have 
added,  "And  then  the  Arabs." 

It  was  not  only  within  the  present  limits  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire  that  the  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress  proposed  to  accomplish 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  53 

their  unitive  purpose,  for  after  having  seen  a 
glorious  and  exclusive  Turkey  arise  over  the 
depopulated  territories  of  their  alien  peoples, 
a  vaster  vision,  for  an  account  of  which  we  are 
indebted  to  Tekin  Alp,  opened  before  their 
prophetic  eyes.  Out  of  the  10,000,000  inhabi- 
tants of  Persia  they  claim  that  one-third  are 
of  true  Turkish  blood,  and  in  the  new  Turkey 
which,  so  they  almost  pathetically  hope,  will  be 
established  at  the  conclusion  of  the  European 
War  by  the  help  of  Wilhelm  ii,  those  Persian 
Turks  must  be  incorporated  into  the  true  fold 
of  Allah,  God  of  Love.  The  province  of  Adar- 
baijan,  for  instance,  the  richest  and  most  en- 
lightened district  of  Persia,  they  claim,  is  en- 
tirely Turkish,  and  here  the  needful  rectification 
will  be  made  in  the  new  atlases  that  bear  the 
imprimatur  of  Potsdam.  Similarly,  all  the 
country  south  of  the  Caucasus  must  rank  as 
Turkish  territory,  since  the  Turks  form  from 
fifty  to  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  population;  all 
Kazan,  for  the  same  reason,  is  truly  Turkish, 
with  the  alluvial  plains  of  the  Volga,  while  the 
Crimea,  so  Tekin  Alp  discovers,  is  also  a  lost 
sheep  longing  for  the  Turkish  fold.  All  this  is 
Turkey  (or  Turania)  Irredenta,  and,  may  we 
not  add: — 


54  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

"Jerusalem  and  Madagascar 
And  North  and  South  Amerikee." 

And  then  what  a  glorious  future  awaits  the 
Power  that  Europe  once  thought  of  as  a  sick 
man.  ''With  the  crushing  of  Russian  despot- 
ism, *'  exclaims  Tekin  Alp,  "by  the  brave  Ger- 
man, Austrian,  and  Turkish  armies,  thirty  to 
forty  million  Turks  will  receive  their  independ- 
ence. With  the  ten  million  Ottoman  Turks  this 
will  form  a  nation  of  fifty  millions,  advancing 
towards  a  great  civilisation  which  may  perhaps 
be  compared  to  that  of  Germany,  in  that  it  will 
have  the  strength  and  energy  to  rise  even 
higher.  In  some  ways  it  will  be  even  superior 
to  the  degenerate  French  and  English  civilisa- 
tions." 

The  arithmetic  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  fore- 
going paragraph  are,  of  course,  those  of  Tekin 
Alp,  from  whose  book,  The  Turkish  and  Pan- 
Turkish  Ideal,  the  quotation  is  made.  The  work 
was  published  in  1915,  and,  appearing  as  it  did 
after  the  beginning  of  the  European  War,  it 
is  but  natural  to  find  in  it  an  expression  not  only 
of  the  Nationalist  aims  for  Turkey,  but  of  the 
Prussian  aims  for  Turkey,  or,  to  speak  more 
correctly,  of  the  dream  which  Prussia  has  in- 
duced in  a  hypnotised  Turkey.  It  sets  forth 
in  fact  the  bait  which  Prussia  has  dangled  in 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  55 

front  of  Turkey,  the  hunger  for  which  has  in- 
spired the  projected  future  which  is  here 
sketched  out ;  and  significantly  enough  this  book 
has  been  spread  broadcast  over  Turkey  by  the 
agency  of  German  propagandists.  The  Otto- 
manisation  of  the  Empire,  the  vision  of  its  fur- 
ther extension,  free  from  all  consideration  of 
subject  peoples,  was  exactly  the  lure  which  was 
most  likely  to  keep  the  Turks  staunch  to  their 
Prussian  masters.  It  will  be  noticed  that  there 
is  no  suggestion  of  the  Turks  recovering  their 
lost  provinces  and  kingdoms  in  Europe,  Greece, 
Bulgaria,  Rumania,  Servia,  and  the  rest,  for 
it  would  never  do  to  let  Fox  Ferdinand  awake 
from  his  hypnotic  sleep  of  a  sort  of  Czardom 
over  the  Balkans,  or  cease  to  dangle  dreams, 
that  included  even  Constantinople  before  the 
shifty  eye  of  King  Constantine.  So,  before 
Turkey  was  spread  the  prospect  of  appropriat- 
ing Russian  and  Persian  spoils:  Prussia  had 
already  given  the  lost  Turkish  kingdoms  in 
Europe  elsewhere,  but  would  there  not  be  a  dis- 
membered Russian  Empire  to  dispose  of?  The 
Crimea,  the  province  of  Kazan,  the  province  of 
Trans-Caucasia :  all  these  might  be  held  before 
Turkey's  nose,  as  a  dog  has  a  piece  of  meat 
held  up  before  it  to  make  it  beg.  Then  there 
was  the  province  of  Adarbaijan :  certainly  Tur- 


56  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

I 

key  might  be  permitted  to  promise  herself  that, 
without  incurring  the  jealousy  of  Austria  or 
Bulgaria.  Greedily  Turkey  took  the  bait.  She 
gulped  it  down  whole,  and  never  considered  that 
there  was  a  string  attached  to  it,  or  that,  should 
ever  the  time  come  when  Germany,  the  con- 
queror of  the  world,  would  be  in  a  position  to 
reward  her  Allies  with  the  realisation  of  the 
dreams  she  had  induced,  the  string  would  be 
pulled,  and  up,  with  retchings  and  vomitings, 
would  come  these  succulent  morsels  of  Russia 
and  Persia.  Indeed  these  bright  pictures  flashed 
on  to  the  sheet  as  the  visions  of  Nationalists 
are  but  the  slides  in  a  German  magic-lantern, 
designed  to  keep  Turkey  amused,  and  it  was 
with  the  same  object  that  Ernst  Marre,  in  his 
Die  Tiirken  und  Wir  nach  dem  Kriege,  was  bid- 
den to  make  other  pictures  ready  in  case  Turkey 
grew  fractious  or  sleepy.  "From  the  ruins  of 
antiquity,"  he  says,  when  speaking  of  the  Ot- 
toman Empire,  ' '  new  life  will  spring,  if  we  can 
manage  to  raise  the  treasures  which  time  and 
sand  have  covered."  Then  he  remembers  that 
he  must  be  less  Pan-Germanic  for  the  moment, 
and  dangles  the  bait  again.  *  *  In  doing  this, ' '  he 
adds,  "we  are  benefiting  Turkey.  The  Turk- 
ish state  is  no  united  whole,  and  it  has  always 
been  very  difficult  to  govern.     Turks,  Arabs, 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  67 

;  I 

Greeks,  Armenians,  Kurds,  cannot  be  welded 
together.  This  is  a  war  of  liberation  for  Tur- 
key. .  .  .  Only  by  energetic  interference,  and 
by  'expelling'  the  obstinate  Armenian  element 
could  the  Ottoman  Empire  get  rid  of  a  Russian 
domination.  .  .  .  The  non-Turkish  population 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire  must  be  Ottomanised." 

There  is  no  need  for  further  quotations, 
which  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely.  The 
Prussian  programme  is  for  the  moment  identi- 
cal with  the  Turkish  Nationalist  programme: 
Turkey,  in  order  to  be  kept  *'in  with"  Germany, 
must  be  encouraged  to  dream  of  depopulated 
Armenia  (that  dream  has  come  tragically  true) 
and  of  annexations  in  Russia  and  Persia.  All 
this  fitted  in  with  the  Turkish  programme: 
Germany  had  scarcely  to  inspire,  only  to  en- 
courage. That  encouragement  she  gave,  for, 
simultaneously  she  was  penetrating  Turkey  as 
water  penetrates  a  sponge,  and  reducing  it  to 
the  position  of  a  vassal  state.  To  keep  Turkey 
happy  she  allowed  the  Armenian  massacres  to 
run  their  deadly  course,  and  only  interfered 
with  other  massacres  when  they  did  not  suit  her 
purpose. 

But  supposing  (to  suppose  the  impossible) 
that  a  peace  to  the  European  War  was  dictated 
by  Germany,  how  much  of  the  future  Pan-Turk- 


68  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ish  programme  would  be  realised?  Would  there 
be  a  Turkey  at  all?  I  think  not:  there  would 
be  a  Germany  in  Europe,  and  a  Germany  in 
Asia,  where  Turkey  once  was.  Indeed,  in  all 
but  name,  they  are  in  existence  now;  so  com- 
plete, as  we  shall  see,  has  been  Germany's  pen- 
etration of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  Just  for  the 
present  she  calls  herself  Turkey  in  those  re- 
gions ;  that  is  her  incognito.  But  Turkey  as  an 
independent  Power  has  already  ceased  to  exist, 
and  Tekin  Alp  and  the  Nationalists  still  dream 
on  with  rainbow  visions  of  Ottomanisation,  the 
vistas  of  which  stretch  far  into  Persia  and  the 
plains  of  the  Volga.  And  all  the  while  she  has 
been  put  out  like  a  candle,  and  all  that  is  left 
of  her  is  the  smouldering  wick  ready  to  be 
pinched  between  the  homy  fingers  of  her  step- 
mother. There  she  stands,  her  stepmother, 
with  her  grinning  teeth  already  disclosing  the 
Wolf.  .  .  . 

Whatever  the  end  of  the  European  War  may 
be,  in  no  circumstances  can  the  dreams  of  the 
Nationalists  be  realised.  Even  if  Germany  and 
her  arms  were  so  victorious  that  Russia  lay  at 
her  feet  a  mere  inert  carcase  ready  for  the 
chopper,  she  would  no  more  dream  of  giving 
Russian  provinces  to  an  independent  Turkey 
than  she  would  hand  over  to  her  Berlin  itself. 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  59 

And  if,  as  we  know,  Germany  can  never  be  vic- 
torious, will  the  Allies  once  more  strive  to  keep 
the  Sick  Man  alive,  or  leave  in  his  ruthless 
power  the  peoples  whom  he  is  longing  to  exter- 
minate? Even  Tekin  Alp  can  hardly  expect 
that. 

Here  then,  in  brief,  is  the  policy  of  New  Tur- 
key. Its  subject  peoples — Armenians,  Arabs, 
Greeks,  Kurds,  and  Jews — are  to  be  totally  un- 
represented in  its  councils,  though  together  they 
number  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  the 
Empire.  But  they  are  not  only  to  be  unrepre- 
sented in  Government — they  are,  if  the  pro- 
gramme is  to  be  carried  conclusively  out,  to 
have  no  existence.  In  accordance  with  the  plans 
of  the  murderous  ruffians  who  to-day  admin- 
ister the  Nationalist  policy,  those  of  the  Arme- 
nians who  have  not  fled  beyond  the  frontiers 
have  already  been  exterminated,  and  the  same 
fate  threatens  Arabs,  Greeks,  and  Jews.  Hence, 
when  the  Allied  Governments  wrote  their  joint 
note  to  President  Wilson,  they  stated  that 
among  their  aims  in  the  war  was  ' '  the  liberation 
of  the  peoples  who  now  lie  beneath  the  mur- 
derous tyranny  of  the  Turks."  From  that 
avowed  determination  they  will  never  recede. 

Note. — It  is  to  be  hoped  that  Tekin  Alp 's  pamphlet, 
Turks  and  the  Pan-Turkish  Ideal,  may  soon  be  acces- 


60  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

sible  to  English  readers.  The  author  is  a  Macedonian 
Jew  who  writes  under  the  pseudonym  of  Tekin  Alp, 
and  his  mind  is  such  that  he  appears  to  find  romance 
in  the  idea  of  a  united  Turkey  purged  by  indiscrimin- 
ate massacre  from  all  alien  elements.  But  he  sets 
forth  with  admirable  lucidity  the  aims  of  the  Nation- 
alist party  and  the  steps  already  achieved  by  them  in 
their  progress  towards  their  ideal.  Already  the  se- 
questered ladies  of  the  harem  have  come  out  of  their 
retirement  and  join  in  the  crusade,  and  not  only  do 
men  give  lectures  to  women,  but  "women  mount  the 
platform  and  address  the  men."  There  are  corpora- 
tions to  advance  economic  organisations,  boy-scout 
centres  all  over  the  Empire,  and  "intellectual  par- 
ties" among  the  guilds  of  merchants — England  and 
Russia  appear  as  the  most  virulent  foes  of  Pan-Turk- 
ism,  "the  colossus  of  darkest  barbarism  joined  with 
the  colossus  of  a  degenerate  civilisation." 

In  the  second  part  of  his  pamphlet  Tekin  Alp 
passes  on  with  an  enthusiasm  which  is  as  sincere  as  it 
is  pathetic  to  the  vision  of  a  tremendous  Turkey,  ex- 
tending from  Thrace  on  the  west  to  the  Desert  of  Gobi 
on  the  east.  It  embraces,  as  his  map  shows,  Egypt  as 
far  south  as  Victoria  Nyanza,  Arabia,  Persia,  the 
greater  part  of  India,  the  littoral  of  the  Black  Sea,  the 
plains  of  the  Volga,  the  circuit  of  the  Caspian  Sea 
and  the  Aral  Sea,  and  in  the  north-east  nearly  touches 
Tomsk.  All  this  naturally  is  dependent  on  complete 
German  victory  in  the  war,  and,  pathetically  enough, 
Tekin  Alp  appears  to  think  that  his  ideal  Turkey 
will  meet  with  the  approval  of  Germany.  Indeed  it  is 
no  wonder  that  his  pamphlet  is  circulated  broadcast 
by  German  propagandists,  for  it  is  precisely  what 
Germany  wants  Turkey  to  believe. 

The  romance  of  the  movement  appeals  also  very 
strongly  to  Ziya  Gok  Alp,  the  official  bard  of  the 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  NEW  TURKS  61 

butchers  of  Constantinople.  He  has  written  a  sort  of 
Ode  to  Attila,  quoted  by  Tekin  Alp,  which  is  a  fine 
frenzy  in  favour  of  barbarism.  This  preposterous 
poem  begins: 

"  I  do  not  read  the  famous  deeds  of  my  ancestors  in 
the  dead,  faded,  dusty  leaves  of  the  history  books,  but 
in  my  own  veins,  in  my  own  heart.  My  Attila,  my 
Huns,  those  heroic  figures  which  stand  for  the  proud 
fame  of  my  race,  appear  in  those  dry  pages  to  our 
malicious  and  slanderous  age  as  covered  with  shame 
and  disgrace,  while  in  reality  they  are  no  less  than 
Alexander  and  Cffisar, "  etc.  etc. 

I  have  been  at  present  unable  to  ascertain  whether 
it  is  true  that  the  German  Emperor  has  set  it  to  music, 
under  the  impression  that  it  refers  to  him  and  the 
German  armies.  It  is  very  popular  in  Prussia,  which 
need  arouse  no  surprise. 


CHAPTER  Iir 

The  End  of  the  Armenian  Question 

We  have  traced  in  brief  tlie  backward  progress 
of  Ottoman  domination,  and  have  seen  how, 
from  the  rough  and  ready  methods  of  a  mili- 
tary barbarism,  the  Turks  evolved  a  more  em- 
phatic and  a  more  highly  organised  negation  of 
all  those  principles  which  we  may  sum  up  under 
the  general  term  of  civilisation.  The  compara- 
tively humane  neglect  of  the  unfortunate  alien 
peoples  herded  within  the  frontiers  of  earlier 
Sultans  was  improved  upon  by  Abdul  Hamid, 
who  struck  out  the  swifter  and  superior  meth- 
ods of  maintaining  the  dominating  strength  of 
the  Turkish  element  in  the  kingdom  not  by  the 
absorption  of  subject  peoples,  but  by  their  ex- 
termination. This  in  turn,  this  new  and  effect- 
ive idea,  served  as  a  first  sketch  of  an  artist 
with  regard  to  his  finished  picture,  and  starting 
with  that  the  Nationalist  party  enlarged  and 
elaborated  it  into  that  masterpiece  of  massacre 
which  they  exhibited  to  the  world  in  the  years 
1915  and  1916  of  the  Christian  Era,  when  from 

62 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  63 

end  to  end  of  the  Empire  there  flashed  the  sig- 
nal for  the  extermination  of  the  Armenian  race. 
Abdul  Hamid  was  but  tentative  and  experimen- 
tal as  compared  to  their  systematised  thorough- 
ness, but  then  the  Nationalist  party  had  learned 
thoroughness  under  the  tutelage  of  its  Prussian 
masters.  And  in  addition  to  instruction  they 
had  had  the  advantage  of  seeing  how  Prussian 
firmness,  with  the  soothing  balm  of  Kultur  to 
follow,  had  dealt  with  the  now-subject  remnant 
of  Belgians.  That  was  the  way  to  treat  subject 
people:  ''the  first  care  of  a  state  is  to  protect 
itself,  *'  as  Enver  and  Talaat  could  read  in  the 
text-books  now  translated  into  Turkish,  in  cop- 
ies, maybe,  presented  to  them  by  their  Master 
in  Berlin,  and  Turkey  could  best  show  the  proof 
of  her  enlightenment  and  regeneration,  by  fol- 
lowing in  the  footsteps  of  Prussian  Kultur. 
Perhaps  a  few  thousand  innocent  men  might 
suffer  the  inconvenience  of  having  their  nails 
torn  out,  of  being  bastinadoed  to  death,  of  be- 
ing shot,  burned  or  hanged,  perhaps  a  few  thou- 
sand girls  and  women  might  die  by  the  wayside 
in  being  deported  to  "agricultural  colonies," 
might  fall  victims  to  the  lusts  of  Turkish  sol- 
diers, or  have  babes  torn  from  their  wombs,  but 
these  paltry  individual  pains  signified  nothing 
compared  to  the  national  duty  of  ' '  suffering  the 


64  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

state  to  run  no  risks. ' '  As  one  of  this  party  of 
Union  and  Progress  said,  "The  innocent  of  to- 
day may  be  the  guilty  of  to-morrow,"  and  it 
was  therefore  wise  to  provide  that  for  innocent 
and  guilty  aliie  there  should  be  no  to-morrow 
at  all.  Years  before  the  statesmanship  of  Ab- 
dul Hamid  had  prophetically  foreseen  the  dawn- 
ing of  this  day,  when  he  remarked,  "The  way 
to  get  rid  of  the  Armenian  question  is  to  get 
rid  of  the  Armenians,"  and  temporarily  for 
twenty  years  he  did  get  rid  of  the  Armenian 
question.  But  when,  in  1915,  Talaat  Bey  com- 
pleted his  arrangements  for  a  further  contribu- 
tion to  the  solution  of  the  same  problem,  he  said, 
"After  this,  there  will  be  no  Armenian  ques- 
tion for  fifty  years."  As  far  as  we  can  judge, 
he  rather  under-estimated  the  thoroughness  of 
his  arrangements.^ 

The  race  thus  marked  out  for  extermination 
was  one  of  the  oldest  settlements  in  Asiatic 
Turkey.  Originally  it  was  confined  to  Armenia 
proper,  a  highland  district  comprising  part  of 
what  is  now  the  Russian  province  of  Trans-Cau- 
casia, part  of  Persia,  notably  the  province  of 

*  Lately  (September  1917),  when  the  massacres  were  all  over, 
Talaat,  speaking  at  a  Congress  of  the  Committee  of  Union  and 
Progress,  upheld  as  right  and  proper  the  treatment  of  the 
Armenian  race. 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  65 

Adarbaijan,  and,  within  the  Turkish  frontier, 
the  province  of  Armenia,  itself.  According  to 
legend,  which  may  well  be  correct,  the  Armen- 
ians were  the  oldest  national  Christian  Chnrch 
in  the  world,  with  a  liturgy  that  dates  from  the 
first  century  of  the  Christian  Era,  while  their 
translation  of  the  Bible  dates  from  the  early 
years  of  the  fifth  century  a.d.  Here  in  these  up- 
lands they  formed  a  compact  and  homogeneous 
population,  spread  over  towns  and  country 
alike,  and  were  occupied  in  the  main  with  agra- 
rian and  pastoral  pursuits.  But  they  had  in 
addition  much  of  the  versatility  and  business 
capacity  of  the  Jews,  as  well  as  a  strong  liberal- 
mindedness  towards  progress  and  education, 
and  thus,  while  they  still  continued  up  to  the 
present  day  their  pastoral  life  in  the  country- 
side, others  gravitated  towards  towns,  and  by 
degrees  they  spread  over  a  large  part  of  the 
Turkish  Empire,  until  most  of  the  towns  in  Tur- 
key had  a  progressive  and  peaceful  quota  of 
Armenian  citizens,  tolerated  by  their  Moslem 
neighbours,  and,  though  possessed  of  no  great 
share  of  political  influence,  powerful,  in  that  the 
trade  and  commerce  of  inland  Turkey  was 
largely  in  their  hands.  'Wherever  they  went 
they  established  their  schools ;  many  were  law- 
yers, doctors,  and  professors  of  education.  Cer- 


66  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

tain  repressive  measures  were  bronght  to  beai^ 
on  them  j  they  were  not,  for  instance,  allowed  to 
carry  arms,  except  when,  in  accordance  with 
Turkish  conscriptive  laws,  they  served  in  the 
Ottoman  army.  But  many  of  them,  by  paying 
their  exemption  money,  got  off  military  service, 
and  they  confined  themselves  to  the  arts  of 
peace,  whether  pastorally  in  their  native  high- 
lands, or  in  the  shops  and  offices  of  the  towns  to 
which  they  migrated.  They  were  not,  till  the 
time  of  Abdul  Hamid,  held  to  be  in  any  sense  a 
national  danger,  for,  except  in  Armenia  proper, 
they  were  too  scattered  and  too  peace-loving  an 
element  of  the  population  to  be  capable  of  unit- 
ed action,  and  never  do  they  seem  to  have  pro- 
voked any  outburst  of  Moslem  fanaticism. 
They  had  local  quarrels  and  fights  with  the  more 
warlike  Kurds  who  encroached  on  Armenia,  and 
in  the  towns  where  they  settled  they  often  in- 
curred the  vague  jealousy  and  dislike  which  are 
the  penalties  of  a  race  superior  morally  and  in- 
tellectually to  those  among  whom  they  live.  But 
that  superiority  constituted  in  course  of  time  the 
"Armenian  question,"  to  which  Abdul  Hamid 
alluded.  In  all,  some  sixty  years  ago  their  en- 
tire race  numbered  about  4,000,000  persons,  of 
whom  about  1,250,000  inhabited  Russian  Trans- 
Caucasia,  about  150,000  were  in  the  province  of 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  67 

Adarbaijan,  and  there  were  smaller  bodies  of 
them  in  Austria  and  India.  The  remainder, 
some  2,500,000,  were  spread  over  Armenia,  over 
the  villages  and  towns  of  Turkey,  notably  the 
eastern  edge  of  the  Cilician  uplands,  while  in 
Constantinople  itself  there  were  certainly  not 
less  than  150,000,  and  probably  as  many  as 
200,000.  To-day,  the  male  portion  of  the  Ar- 
menian race  in  the  Ottoman  Empire  has  prac- 
tically ceased  to  exist:  a  quarter  of  a  miUion 
men  and  women  escaped  over  the  Russian  fron- 
tier, five  thousand  escaped  to  Egypt,  and  there 
are  a  few  thousand  women  and  girls  (it  is  im- 
possible to  ascertain  the  exact  number)  in  Turk- 
ish harems.  Turkism,  as  administered  by  Ab- 
dul Hamid  first,  then,  far  more  efficiently,  by 
Enver  Pasha  and  Talaat  Bey,  has  solved  the 
Armenian  question. 

The  history  of  its  solution  falls  under  two 
heads,  of  which  the  first  concerns  the  manner  in 
which  it  was  solved  in  Armenia  itself,  where  the 
population  was  almost  exclusively  Armenian, 
both  in  towns  and  in  the  country.  Here  the 
eastern  and  north-eastern  frontiers  of  Turkey, 
across  which  lie  the  province  of  Russian  Trans- 
Caucasia  and  Persia,  pass  through  the  middle 
of  districts  peopled  by  men  of  Armenian  blood, 
and  when,  in  the  autumn  of  1914,  the  Turks 


68  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

made  their  entry  into  the  European  War,  their 
eastern  armies,  operating  against  Russia,  found 
themselves  confronted  by  troops  among  whom 
were  many  Armenians,  while  in  their  advance 
into  the  Persian  province  of  Adarbaijan,  there 
were  in  the  ranks  of  their  opponents,  Armenians 
and  Syriac  Christians.  They  advanced  in  fact, 
in  the  first  weeks  of  the  war,  into  a  country 
largely  peopled  with  men  of  the  same  blood  as 
those  on  their  own  side  of  the  frontier.  Though 
the  edict  had  not  yet  come  from  Constantinople 
for  the  massacre  of  the  Armenians  (Talaat  Bey 
did  not  complete  his  arrangements  till  the  fol- 
lowing April),  the  slaughter  of  them  began  then, 
first  in  the  advance  of  the  Turkish  armies,  and 
following  on  that  movement,  which  lasted  but  a 
few  weeks,  in  their  subsequent  retreat  before 
the  Russians.  All  villages  through  which  the 
Turkish  armies  passed  were  plundered  and 
burned,  all  the  inhabitants  on  whom  the  Turks 
could  lay  their  hands  were  killed.  Sometimes 
women  and  children  were  given  to  the  Kurds, 
who  formed  bands  of  irregular  troops  in  con- 
junction with  the  Turkish  army,  and  these  were 
outraged  before  they  were  slaughtered.  A  price 
was  put  on  every  Christian  head,  and  in  the 
Turkish  retreat  the  corpses  were  thrust  into  the 
wells  in  order  to  pollute  them.    The  excuse  for 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  69 

this,  as  given  by  German  apologists  (not  apol- 
ogists, perhaps,  so  much  as  supporters  and  ad- 
herents of  the  policy),  was  that  since  behind  the 
Turkish  lines  the  country  was  populated  by  a 
race  of  the  same  blood  as  that  through  which 
they  advanced,  and  then  retreated,  extermina- 
tion was  necessary  in  order  to  prevent  or  to 
punish  treachery  and  collusion.  But  I  have 
been  nowhere  able  to  find  that  there  were  in- 
stances of  such,  nor  that  the  Turks  put  forward 
that  excuse  themselves.  Indeed  it  would  have 
been  an  unnecessary  explanation,  for  but  a  few 
months  after  the  opening  of  the  war,  Talaat 
Bey's  plans  were  complete,  and  the  extermina- 
tion of  Armenians  hundreds  of  miles  from  any 
sphere  of  mihtary  operations  rendered  it  need- 
less to  say  anything  about  it,  or  to  invent  in- 
stances of  treachery  if  there  were  actually  none 
to  hand. 

Simultaneously  the  massacre  of  Armenians 
behind  the  Turkish  lines  began.  The  whole  male 
population  of  the  district  round  Bitlis  was  mur- 
dered, so  too  were  all  males  in  Bitlis  itself. 
Then  all  women  and  children  were  driven  in,  as 
a  herdsman  might  drive  sheep,  from  the  reeking 
villages  round,  and,  for  purposes  of  convenience, 
concentrated  in  Bitlis.  When  they  were  all  col- 
lected, they  were  driven  in  a  flock  to  the  edge  of 


70         CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

the  Tigris,  shot,  and  the  corpses  were  thrown 
into  the  river.  That  was  the  solution  of  the 
Armenian  question  in  Bitlis. 

North-west  of  Bitlis,  and  some  sixty  miles 
distant,  lies  the  town  of  Mush.  It  used  to  con- 
tain about  25,000  Armenian  inhabitants,  and  in 
the  district  round  there  were  some  three  hun- 
dred villages  chiefly  consisting  of  Armenians. 
Arrangements  were  on  foot  for  a  general  mas- 
sacre there  when  the  arrival  of  Russian  troops 
at  Liz,  some  fifteen  hours'  march  away,  caused 
the  execution  of  it  to  be  put  off  for  a  while,  and 
up  till  July  a  few  folk  only  had  been  shot,  and 
a  few  beaten  to  death,  as  a  warning  to  those 
treacherously  inclined.  Then  the  Russians,  in 
the  face  of  superior  forces,  had  to  retire  again, 
and  the  massacres  were  put  on  a  systematic 
footing.  The  account  which  follows  is  based  on 
four  independent  authorities:  (1)  The  state- 
ment of  a  German  eye-witness  in  Mush  in 
charge  of  an  Armenian  orphanage;  (2)  the 
statement  of  a  woman  deported  from  a  village 
near,  and  subsequently  killed  by  Kurds;  (3)  in- 
formation from  refugees  escaped  to  Trans- 
Caucasia;  (4)  the  journal  Horizon  of  Tiflis. 
These  supplement  each  other,  often  verify  each 
other,  and  in  no  instance  are  contradictory. 

Rumours  of  an  impending  massacre  reached 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     71 

Mush  before  the  end  of  1914,  at  a  time  when 
the  massacres  across  the  frontier  had  be- 
gun. The  Mutessarif  of  Mush,  an  intimate 
friend  of  Enver  Pasha,  had  openly  declared  that 
''at  an  opportune  moment"  the  slaughter  of 
the  whole  Armenian  race  was  contemplated,  and 
later  Ekran  Bey  corroborated  this  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  American  and  German  Consuls. 
Enver  indeed  seems  to  have  been  the  chief  or- 
ganiser with  regard  to  the  massacres  in  Ar- 
menia itself,  while  Talaat  Bey  saw  to  the  fate 
of  those  dispersed  in  towns  throughout  the  rest 
of  Turkey.  During  the  whole  of  that  winter,  a 
very  severe  one,  signs  of  the  approaching  ex- 
termination multiplied.  In  the  villages  round 
fresh  taxes  were  introduced,  and  when  Ar- 
menians were  unable  to  pay  they  were  beaten 
to  death,  while,  if  they  resisted,  the  village  in 
question  was  burned.  But  by  July  1915  (after 
the  unavoidable  delay  caused  by  the  proximity 
of  Russian  troops)  all  was  ready,  and  the  mas- 
sacre began  in  earnest. 

Four  battalions  of  Turkish  troops  arrived 
from  Constantinople,  and  an  order  was  given 
that  aU  Armenians  must  leave  the  town  within 
three  days,  after  ''registering  themselves"  at 
the  Government  office.  The  women  and  children 
were  to  remain,  but  their  money  and  their  prop- 


72  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

erty  would  be  confiscated.  Within  two  hours 
after  that,  owing,  I  suppose,  to  fresh  orders 
from  Constantinople,  the  guns  opened  fire  on 
the  crowds  in  the  streets  flocking  to  the  registry 
offices,  and  after  that  systematic  house-to-house 
murder  began.  Prominent  Armenians  were  tor- 
tured to  death,  houses  containing  women  and 
children  were  set  on  fire,  a  body  of  men  col- 
lected together  was  thrown  into  the  river,  girls 
were  outraged  and  slaughtered.  For  two  days 
the  massacre  continued,  and  by  the  end  of  the 
second  day  the  Armenian  question  was  solved 
as  regards  Mush. 

In  the  surrounding  villages  the  same  Prus- 
sian thoroughness  was  observed,  and  out  of  all 
the  inhabitants  of  the  plain  5,000  only  seemed  to 
have  survived,  who  fled  to  Sasun  (there  to  be 
subsequently  massacred  in  1916),  while  a  few 
from  outlying  villages  escaped  to  the  Russian 
troops.  In  certain  villages  the  girls  and  young 
women  were  given  to  the  Kurd  soldiery,  who 
raped  them  publicly  in  the  presence  of  their 
families,  not  sparing  girls  of  eight  and  ten  years 
of  age,  who  then,  bleeding  and  violated,  were 
shot  in  company  with  the  old  women,  for  whom 
the  Kurds  (inspired  by  Allah,  the  God  of  Love) 
had  no  use.  Elsewhere,  as  the  story  of  a  de- 
ported woman  from  Kheiban  tells  us,  the  women 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     73 

guarded  by  Kurdish  troops  were  driven  out  of 
their  villages,  leaving  behind  the  corpses  of  the 
men  and  of  old  women  who  could  not  walk,  and 
for  days  were  marched  along  the  roads,  nearly 
naked,  under  the  fierce  heat  of  the  July  sun. 
Once  every  other  day  they  were  given  bread, 
but  all  did  not  get  it,  and  many  fell  exhausted 
by  the  wayside,  and  were  either  whipped  to 
their  feet  again  or  allowed  to  lie  down  and  die. 
As  they  passed  through  villages  Kurds  would 
come  out  and  rape  a  girl  or  two,  and  when  they 
halted  at  night  their  guards  would  come  among 
them.  .  .  .  Some  few  escaped;  the  rest,  in 
dwindling  company,  went  on  through  days  of 
blinding  sun  and  nights  of  shame  till  at  last 
there  were  only  a  few  remaining.  It  was  not 
worth  while  going  farther,  for  the  work  of  En- 
ver  Pasha  was  nearly  done,  and  the  rest  were 
pushed  into  the  river.  One  alone  survived,  who 
could  swim,  and  she,  with  her  two-year-old  baby 
on  her  back,  got  across  the  stream  and  made 
her  way  to  a  village  where  were  a  party  of 
Armenians  who  had  escaped  massacre.  She  ar- 
rived there  at  midnight,  and  at  first  they  thought 
she  was  a  ghost.  To  them  she  told  her  story  of 
the  outraged  and  ever-dwindling  caravan  of 
helpless  women  and  girls  driven  onwards  all 
day  beneath  the  smiting  arrows  of  the  sun,  and 


74  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

encamped  by  the  wayside,  where  they  halted 
with  their  barbarous  guards  and  their  lusts  for 
a  terror  by  night.  Of  them  none  but  this  one 
was  left,  who  had  carried  her  baby  with  her 
every  step  of  that  infernal  pilgrimage.  Two 
days  afterwards  he  died  from  want  of  nourish- 
ment, and  before  the  week  was  out  the  mother 
fell  into  the  hands  of  a  body  of  patrolling  Kurds, 
and  was  killed. 

So  the  problem  of  the  village  of  Kheiban  was 
solved,  and  if  in  the  history  of  the  crimes  that 
have  blackened  the  earth  with  wanton  cruelty 
and  made  God  to  hide  His  face,  there  is  any  so 
atrocious  a  tale,  I  do  not  know  it.  But  if  among 
the  annals  of  heroism  and  of  mother-love  we 
want  to  find  a  nobler  record  than  that  of  this 
woman  of  EZheiban,  equally  am  I  at  a  loss  as  to 
where  we  should  look  for  it.  Among  the  true 
and  golden  legends  of  the  world  shall  that  which 
she  did  be  inscribed  for  a  memorial  of  her. 

Northward  from  Mush  and  Bitlis  lies  the 
province  of  Erzerum,  with  the  town  of  the  same 
name,  that  contained  in  the  autumn  of  1914  some 
20,000  Armenians.  Here  the  first  hint  of  com- 
ing trouble  was  the  order  that  all  Armenian 
soldiers  serving  in  Turkish  ranks  should  be 
disarmed.  This  was  followed  in  June  by  an- 
other order  that  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  hun- 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     75 

dred  villages  in  the  district  should  leave  their 
homes  at  two  hours'  notice.  They  numbered 
between  10,000  and  15,000  persons.  Of  these 
a  few  took  refuge  with  friendly  Kurds,  but  of 
the  remainder  a  few  only  lived  to  reach  Erzin- 
jan,  where  they  were  again  deported,  and  the 
rest  were  murdered  as  they  marched.  In  Erze- 
rum  itself  orders  were  received  by  Tahsin  Bey, 
the  Vali  of  the  town,  that  all  Armenians  were 
to  be  killed  without  distinction  of  age  or  sex. 
He  refused  to  carry  this  order  out,  but  his  un- 
willingness was  overruled.^  Simultaneously 
the  German  Consul  telegraphed  protests  to  his 
Ambassador  at  Constantinople,  and  was  told 
that  Germany  could  not  interfere  in  the  inter- 
nal aifairs  of  Turkey. 

Here  the  method  employed  was  deportation : 
the  victims  were  murdered,  not  in  the  town  it- 
self, but  were  given  orders  to  leave  their  homes, 
and  under  guard  march  (for  no  conveyances 
were  given  them)  to  other  districts.  The  first 
company  was  to  go  to  Diarbekr.  All  these,  mth 
the  exception  of  one  man  and  forty  women,  were 
murdered  on  the  first  day's  march.  The  re- 
mainder reached  Kharput,  which  was  another 

*  At  Angora  a  similar  refusal  on  the  part  of  the  Governor 
resulted  in  his  dismissal,  and  the  same  thing  happened  at  Konia 
and  at  Kutaia. 


76  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

station  or  collecting  place  for  the  deported.  A 
German  eye-witness  tells  us  what  fate  waited 
them.  * '  They  have  had  their  eyebrows  plucked 
out,  their  breasts  cut  off,  their  nails  torn  off; 
their  torturers  hew  off  their  feet,  or  else  ham- 
mer nails  into  them  as  they  do  in  shoeing 
horses.  This  is  all  done  at  night-time,  in  order 
that  people  may  not  hear  their  screams  and 
know  of  their  agony.  Soldiers  are  stationed 
round  the  prisons,  beating  drums  and  blowing 
whistles.  It  is  needless  to  relate  that  many  died 
of  these  tortures.  When  they  die,  the  soldiers 
cry,  'Now  let  your  Christ  help  you.'  "  A  sec- 
ond caravan  of  five  hundred  families  left  Erze- 
rum:  at  Baiburt  they  were  joined  by  another 
contingent  deported  from  that  town,  and  the  ac- 
count that  follows  is  based  on  the  information 
supplied  by  the  Rev.  Robert  Stapleton,  an 
American  minister  at  Erzerum,  and  by  an  Ar- 
menian woman  who  was  among  the  deported, 
and  whose  life  was  spared  on  her  embracing 
Islamism. 

The  convoy  numbered,  when  it  left  Baiburt, 
some  15,000  persons,  and  it  reached  ErzinjanI 
in  safety.  There  the  massacres  had  already 
taken  place,  and  the  women  and  children  had 
been  deported,  for  they  found  no  Armenians 
there.    But  the  convoy  had  not  yet  arrived  at 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     77 

its  goal,  and  it  started  out  again  moving  south 
by  east  till  it  came  to  Kamakh.  There  bands 
of  Kurds  descended  on  them,  and  in  the  space 
of  seven  days  every  male  above  fifteen  years  of 
age,  including  an  aged  priest  of  ninety,  was 
killed.  Thereafter  a  pilgrimage  of  women,  as 
from  Kheiban,  moved  southwards  across  plain 
and  mountain,  and  every  day  its  numbers  were 
diminished,  for  the  youthful  and  the  good-look- 
ing were  carried  off  by  brigands.  At  night  they 
were  halted  outside  villages,  and  the  gendarmes 
and  villagers  took  what  they  chose.  Many  died 
from  hunger  and  heat-stroke :  others  were  left 
by  the  wayside.  When  they  came  to  the  banks 
of  the  river  Kara-Su  there  was  a  debauch  of 
horror.  Women  and  girls  and  little  children 
were  raped  and  mutilated,  and  the  children 
who  still  survived  were  thrown  into  the  river. 
Those  who  could  swim  were  shot.  There- 
after the  movements  of  this  caravan  are 
hard  to  trace.  Probably  there  was  then  but 
little  left  of  it.  But  others  followed  on  the  same 
route  ''through  fields  and  hillsides  dotted  with 
swollen  and  blackened  corpses  that  filled  and 
fouled  the  air  with  their  stench."  Some  of 
them  reached  Mosul,  some  reached  Aleppo,  an- 
other collecting  station,  where,  by  the  mouth  of 
other  witnesses,  we  shall  hear  of  them  again. 


78  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Corroborative  and  additional  evidence  is 
given  by  the  Danish  Red  Cross  nurses  who,  with 
a  noble  disregard  of  their  own  safety,  accom- 
panied one  of  these  caravans  from  Erzerum  to 
Erzinjan.  They  speak  of  the  massacres  at 
Kamakh,  of  the  killing  by  the  river,  and  of  a 
battue  through  the  cornfields,  where  the  wheat 
was  high,  into  which  some  Armenians  had  es- 
caped. At  one  time  these  Danish  Sisters  were 
in  the  charge  of  a  gendarme  who  had  super- 
intended a  massacre  of  3,000  women  and  chil- 
dren driven  from  their  homes  into  the  country, 
rounded  up  and  killed.  He  told  the  Sisters  that 
this  was  the  best  method  of  getting  rid  of  them, 
for  they  should  be  made  to  suffer  first,  and  be- 
sides it  would  be  inconvenient  for  Moslems  to 
live  in  a  village  with  so  many  corpses  about. 
At  another  place  they  came  to  a  shambles,  where 
Armenian  soldiers,  deprived  of  their  arms,  and 
sent  to  make  roads,  had  been  slaughtered:  at 
another  there  were  three  gangs  of  labourers, 
one  Moslem,  one  Greek,  and  one  Armenian. 
These  latter  were  guarded.  Presently,  as  they 
proceeded  along  their  road,  they  looked  round 
and  saw  that  the  Armenian  gang  was  being 
formed  up  by  itself,  a  little  off  the  high- 
road, .  .  . 

And  so  the  ghastly  record  went  on  all  over 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     79 

Armenia.  At  one  place  only,  the  town  of  Van, 
was  any  resistance  organised.  There,  after  the 
massacre  had  begun,  some  1500  Armenians  got 
hold  of  arms  (probably  many  of  these  men  were 
soldiers  who  had  not  yet  had  their  arms  taken 
from  them),  and  for  the  space  of  twenty-seven 
days  defended  themselves  against  five  thousand 
Turkish  troops,  till  the  Russian  advance  re- 
lieved them.  During  that  advance  Armenian 
refugees,  into  whose  districts  the  massacres  had 
not  yet  penetrated,  fled  for  refuge  to  the  invad- 
ing army,  and  in  all  some  250,000  Armenians 
under  its  protection  crossed  in  safety  the  Rus- 
sian frontier  into  Trans-Caucasia.  How  many 
died  on  the  way  from  hunger  and  exhaustion  is 
not  known.  Cholera,  dysentery,  and  spotted 
fever  broke  out  among  them,  and  the  path  of 
their  passage  was  lined  Avith  dead  and  dying. 
Companies  of  Kurds  made  descents  upon  them, 
taking  toll  of  their  maidenhood,  but,  with  the 
Russian  line  to  protect  them  at  their  rear,  they 
struggled  on  out  of  the  cemetery  and  brothel 
of  their  native  country,  and  out  of  the  accursed 
confines  of  that  hell  on  earth,  the  Ottoman  Em- 
pire, leaving  behind  them  the  murdered  myriads 
of  their  husbands  and  their  sons,  their  violated 
wives  and  daughters.  Through  incredible  hard- 
ships they  passed,  but,  unlike  the  other  pilgrim- 


80  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ages  we  have  briefly  traced,  they  moved  not 
towards  death,  but  towards  safety  and  life,  and 
their  dark  steps  were  lightened  with  Hope. 

Before  the  last  of  those  who  survived  the 
hunger  and  the  pestilence  of  that  pilgrimage 
had  reached  Russian  soil,  it  is  probable  that 
in  all  Armenia  there  was  not  a  man  of  their 
race  left  alive,  nor  a  woman  either  unless  she 
had  accepted  Islamism  and  the  life  of  the  harem. 
A  peaceful  and  progressive  nation  had  been 
wiped  out  with  every  accompaniment  of  horror 
and  cruelty  and  bestial  lust,  and  in  Armenia  it- 
self there  would  never  more  be  an  Armenian 
question.  Abdul  Hamid  had  hinted  at  the  solu- 
tion of  it,  and  had  made,  as  we  have  seen,  ex- 
periments in  that  direction ;  but  it  was  reserved 
for  Enver  Pasha  and  Talaat  Bey,  enlightened 
men  of  the  Young  Turk  party,  with  the  advan- 
tages of  a  Prussian  example,  to  complete  the 
work.  Already  Enver  had  said  that  he  would 
never  rest  until  the  last  Armenian  in  the  Otto- 
man Empire  had  been  killed,  and  before  the  end 
of  1915,  as  far  as  Armenia  itself  went,  he  was 
able  to  see  a  reasonable  prospect  of  repose  be- 
fore him.  But  there  was  much  work  still  left  to 
do  in  other  provinces. 

We  have  seen  that  for  the  extirpation  of  Ar- 
menians in  Armenia  proper,  the  excuse  put  for- 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  81 

ward,  if  not  by  the  Turks  themselves,  by  their 
German  apologists,  was  the  necessity  of  guard- 
ing against  treachery  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
Turkish  army,  and  against  spying  and  collusion 
between  the  Armenians  behind  the  Russian  lines 
and  those  behind  Turkish  lines.  The  same  pre- 
text was  put  forward  for  the  massacres  and  de- 
portations from  Thrace,  from  Constantinople, 
and  from  the  shores  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora. 
Here,  if  anj^where,  there  may  be  thought  to  be 
some  justification  for  measures  which  might 
have  been  undertaken  for  the  sake  of  public 
safety.  At  any  rate,  there  were  definite  charges 
brought  against  Armenians  in  these  districts, 
and  the  Armenian  boatmen  of  Silivri,  for  in- 
stance, were  imprisoned,  but  not,  as  far  as  I 
know,  massacred,  on  the  charge  of  revictualling 
English  submarines,  which  at  that  time,  as  the 
reader  will  remember,  had  penetrated  into  the 
Sea  of  Marmora,  and  indeed  had  reached  Con- 
stantinople itself.  It  is  not,  of  course,  con- 
sonant with  Turkish  or  Prussian  justice  to  sub- 
stantiate charges  before  inflicting  penalties,  it 
is  sufficient  in  the  new  World-justice  to  accuse. 
But  here  round  Constantinople,  there  was  some 
pretence  at  procedure  before  resorting  to  mur- 
der and  deportation.  A  register  was  dra^vn  up 
of  all  Armenians  resident  in  the  capital,  divid- 


82  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ing  into  separate  classes  those  who  were  bom 
in  Constantinople,  and  those  who  were  immi- 
grants from  Armenia,  with  a  view  to  deporting 
those  who  were  not  native  to  the  city.  Here, 
I  think,  we  may  see  traces  of  the  Prussian  in- 
stinct for  tabulation,  for  classification,  for 
category-mongering.  Enver  and  his  colleagues 
lost  patience  with  these  dilatory  tactics.  The 
Armenians  of  the  province  of  Brussa  were  de- 
ported wholesale,  and  long  before  the  registra- 
tion lists  of  Constantinople  were  finished,  all 
Armenians  were  moved  out  of  the  town.  Ten 
thousand  males  were  massacred  in  the  moun- 
tains of  Ismid,  and  the  Armenian  women  and 
children  taken  into  collecting  stations  for  de- 
portation to  ''agricultural  colonies"  (so  the 
phrase  ran  in  the  Pecksniff  language  of  Prus- 
sia) situated  in  the  Anatolian  desert,  in  the 
desert  of  Arabia,  and  in  malarious  marshes  on 
the  Euphrates.  With  this  clearing  out  of  Ar- 
menians from  Thrace,  from  Constantinople,  and 
from  Armenia  itself,  we  have  finished  with  our 
first  class  of  the  Armenian  atrocities.  For  it 
reasons  were  at  least  invented  by  German  apolo- 
gists. Military  necessities,  which  here,  as  in 
Belgium,  knew  no  law,  dictated  it ;  the  f rightful- 
ness involved  was  incidental  to  War.  But  such 
considerations  were  not  even  alleged  for  the 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  83 

second  class  of  the  murder-scheme.  Before 
passing  on,  it  will  be  well  to  review,  quite 
shortly,  the  reasons  which  dictated  it,  and  pene- 
trate into  the  infernal  councils  of  Enver  Pasha 
and  Talaat  Bey. 

The  text  of  the  scheme  is  to  be  found  in  the 
defined  policy  of  the  Young  Turk  party  as  set 
forth  in  their  Congress  of  1911.  ^'Turkey  must 
become  a  really  Mohammedan  country,  and 
Moslem  ideas  and  Moslem  influence  must  be 
preponderant.  .  .  •  Sooner  or  later  the  com- 
plete Ottomanisation  of  all  Turkish  subjects 
must  be  effected :  it  is  clear,  however,  that  this 
can  never  be  attained  by  persuasion,  but  that 
we  must  resort  to  armed  force.'* 

There  is  the  text  that  was  expanded  into  the 
discourse  of  murder;  it  is  the  definition  of  a 
policy.  "Within  a  few  years  there  followed  the 
European  War,  and  that  probably  was  the  im- 
mediate cause  of  its  being  put  into  effect.  No 
more  admirable  opportunity  for  Ottomanisation 
could  present  itself,  for  the  entry  of  Turkey  into 
the  war  was  most  unpopular  with  the  bulk  of 
the  Turkish  population,  and  it  was  advisable  to 
bribe  them  into  acceptance  of  it.  The  bribe  was 
the  houses,  the  property,  the  money  and  the 
trade  that  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  Turkey  was  in  Armenian  hands.     For  the 


84  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Armenians  were  by  far  the  wealthiest  of  the 
alien  populations,  and  some  90  per  cent,  of 
Turkish  trade  passed  through  their  shops  and 
offices.  Here,  then,  was  the  psychological  mo- 
ment :  Turkey  for  the  Turk  was  the  aim  of  the 
Committee  of  Union  and  Progress,  and  with  a 
discontented  population,  unwilling  to  fight,  the 
moment  had  come  for  restoring  to  the  Turk 
this  mass  of  property  which  at  present  be- 
longed to  an  alien  race.  War  might  have  its 
drawbacks  and  its  clouds,  but  war  would  be 
seen  to  have  its  advantages  and  its  silver  lin- 
ings, if  out  of  it  there  came  this  legacy  of  Ar- 
menian wealth.  And  by  the  same  stroke  Turkey 
could  get  rid  of  those  thousands  of  meddlesome 
missionaries,  American  and  French,  who  spread 
religion  and  learning  and  other  undesirable 
things  among  the  cursed  race.  Once  remove  the 
cursed  race,  and  there  would  be  an  end  of  their 
instructors  also,  for  there  would  be  none  to 
instruct.  *  *  Thanks  to  their  schools, "  so  we  read 
in  the  Hilal,  an  organ  of  the  Young  Turks, 
"foreigners  were  able  to  exercise  great  moral 
influence  over  the  young  men  of  the  country. 
.  .  .  By  closing  them  {i.e.  by  exterminating 
their  pupils)  the  Government  has  put  an  end  to 
a  situation  as  humiliating  as  it  was  dangerous." 
Such,  then,  was  the  spirit  that  animated  Eu- 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  85 

ver  and  Talaat,  and  during  the  winter  of  1914-15 
they  perfected  their  plans.  The  Armenian  race 
was  to  cease,  and  the  Valis  and  other  officials 
were,  each  in  his  district,  to  see  to  the  thor- 
oughness of  its  cessation.  Sometimes,  as  hap- 
pened at  Erzerum,  the  Vali  in  question,  not 
having  the  broad  outlook  of  Enver,  or  quaintly 
and  curiously  having  a  womanish  objection  to 
the  national  duty  of  flogging  men  to  death  and 
giving  over  young  girls  to  a  barbarous  soldiery, 
remonstrated  with  the  authorities,  or  even  re- 
fused to  obey  orders.  Such  a  one  was  instantly 
removed  from  his  office,  and  a  stauncher  patriot 
substituted.  All  was  put  on  an  orderly  footing : 
here  Kurds  were  to  be  employed  on  the  old  Ab- 
dul Hamid  formula,  who  by  way  of  wage  would 
enjoy  the  privilege  of  raping  as  many  women 
and  girls  out  of  their  hapless  convoy  as  seemed 
desirable,  while  in  agricultural  districts  they 
were  allowed  also  to  take  over  the  sheep  and 
cattle  of  their  murdered  victims.  Here,  in 
towns  where  there  was  more  chance  of  resist- 
ance than  in  scattered  homesteads,  it  would  be 
wise  to  employ  regular  troops,  backed,  if  neces- 
sary, by  artillery,  to  whom  would  be  entrusted 
the  murder  of  the  whole  male  population,  after 
suitable  tortures,  supposing  the  executioners 
had  a  taste  for  the  sport,  and  to  them  was  given 


86  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

the  right  of  general  plunder.  Then,  as  soon  as 
the  number  and  capacity  of  the  vacant  houses 
were  telegraphed  to  Constantinople,  occupiers 
from  the  discontented  townsfolk  and  natives  of 
Thrace  were  assigned  to  them.  Sometimes 
there  would  be  a  big  school  building  to  give 
away  as  well,  but  that  was  not  always  so,  for  it 
might  be  more  convenient  to  assemble  Ar- 
menians there  for  purposes  of  registration  or 
so  forth,  and  then,  if  it  happened  to  catch  fire, 
why  Enver  would  understand  that  such  acci- 
dents would  occur.  Among  other  careful  and 
well-thought-out  instructions  came  the  order 
that,  when  possible,  the  murders  should  not  take 
place  in  the  town,  but  outside  it,  for  clean 
Allah-fearing  Moslems  would  not  like  to  live  in 
habitations  defiled  by  Christian  corpses.  But, 
above  all,  there  must  be  thoroughness;  not  a 
man  must  be  left  alive,  not  a  girl  nor  a  woman 
who  must  not  drag  her  outraged  body,  so  long 
as  breath  and  the  heart-beat  remained  in  it,  to, 
or  rather  towards  those  ''agricultural  colonies," 
as  Talaat  Bey,  in  a  flash  of  whimsical  Prussian 
humour,  called  them.  One  was  advantageously 
situated  in  the  middle  of  the  Anatolian  desert 
at  the  village  of  Sultanieh.  There,  for  miles 
round,  stretched  the  rocks  and  sands  of  a  water- 
less wilderness,  but  no  doubt  the  women  and 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  87 

children  of  this  very  industrious  race  would 
manage  to  make  it  wave  with  cornfields.  An- 
other agricultural  colony,  by  way  of  contrast, 
should  be  established  a  couple  of  days'  journey 
south  of  Aleppo,  where  the  river  loses  itself  in 
pestilential  and  malarious  swamps.  Arabs 
could  not  live  there,  but  who  knew  whether 
those  hardy  Armenians  (the  women  and  chil- 
dren of  them  at  least  who  had  proved  them- 
selves robust  enough  to  reach  the  place)  would 
not  flourish  there  out  of  harm's  wayt  After 
the  swamps  one  came  to  the  Arabian  desert, 
and  there,  a  hundred  miles  south-east,  was  a 
place  called  Deir-el-Zor ;  wandering  Arab  tribes 
sometimes  passed  through  it,  but,  arrived  there, 
the  Armenians  should  wander  no  more.  In 
those  arid  sands  and  waterless  furnaces  of  bar- 
ren rock  there  was  room  for  all  and  to  spare. 
Sultanieh,  the  swamps,  and  Deir-el-Zor:  these 
were  the  chief  of  Talaat  Bey's  agricultural 
colonies. 

There  must  be  collecting  stations  for  these 
tragic  colonists,  centres  to  which  they  must  be 
herded  in  from  surrounding  districts:  one  at 
Osmanieh,  let  us  say,  one  at  Aleppo,  one  at 
Eas-el-Ain,  one  at  Damascus.  And  since  it 
would  be  a  pity  to  let  so  many  flowers  of  girl- 
hood waste  their  sweetness  on  the  desert  air  of 


88  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Deir-el-Zor,  slave  markets  must  be  established 
at  these  collecting  stations.  There  would  be 
plenty  of  girls,  and  prices  would  be  low,  but 
the  reverend  ministers  of  Allah  the  God  of 
Love,  the  Ulemas,  the  Padis  and  the  Muftis, 
should  be  accorded  a  preferential  tariff.  In- 
deed they  should  pay  nothing  at  all ;  they  should 
just  choose  a  girl  and  take  her  away,  and,  with 
the  help  of  Allah  the  God  of  Love,  convert  her 
to  the  blessed  creed.  No  one  was  too  young 
for  these  lessons.  ...  A  little  abstemiousness 
would  not  hurt  these  pampered  Christians,  so 
when  they  set  out  on  their  marches  they  need 
not  be  provided  with  rations  or  water.  Per- 
haps some  might  die,  but  Talaat  had  no  use  for 
weaklings  at  his  agricultural  colonies.  Nor 
must  there  be  any  poking  and  prying  on  the 
part  of  those  interfering  American  mission- 
aries; and  so  Talaat  Bey  put  all  the  agricul- 
tural colonies  out  of  bounds  for  foreigners.  .  .  . 
There  was  no  hurry  over  these  deportations, 
for  the  plea  of  military  exigencies,  which  had 
caused  the  deportations  in  Armenia  itself  to  be 
terminated  by  massacre  with  a  rapidity  almost 
inartistic,  did  not  apply  to  Armenians  so  far 
from  the  seat  of  war.  Their  picnics  could  be 
conducted  quietly  and  pleasantly  in  the  leisurely 
Oriental  manner.    Even  the  men  need  not  be 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION  89 

murdered  absolutely  out  of  hand.  Strong  young 
fellows  might  be  stripped  and  tied  down  and 
then  beaten  to  death  by  bastinadoing  the  feet 
till  they  burst,  or  by  five  hundred  blows  on  the 
chest  and  stomach.  Their  cries  would  mingle 
with  the  screams  of  their  sisters  in  the  embrace 
of  Turkish  soldiers.  And,  talking  of  embraces, 
if  a  woman  was  desirable,  she  need  not  walk  all 
the  way  to  Deir-el-Zor,  but  by  embracing  Islam- 
ism  be  transferred  to  a  harem.  But  these  were 
details  that  might  be  left  to  individual  taste: 
there  were  no  precise  instructions  save  that  no 
Armenian  men  must  be  discoverable  in  the 
Ottoman  Empire  at  all,  and  no  women  save 
those  who  had  become  Turkish  women,  or  who 
were  at  work  on  the  waterless  and  the  malarial 
agricultural  colonies. 

Talaat  Bey  reviewed  his  finished  scheme.  He 
thought  it  would  do,  and  Enver  Pasha  agreed 
with  him,  and  Jemal  Bey  (who  soon  after 
styled  himself  Jemal  the  Great),  the  Military 
Governor  of  Syria,  and  so  responsible  for  the 
last  stages  of  their  pilgrimage,  thought  it  would 
do  very  well  indeed.  And  instructions  were 
sent  out  to  every  town  in  the  Empire  where 
there  were  Armenians,  in  accordance  with  the 
programme  of  Talaat  Bey. 

How  Enver  carried  out  his  part  of  the  pro- 


90  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 


gramme  in  Armenia  itself  we  have  seen,  and  by 
the  end  of  the  year  (1915)  his  work  was  done, 
and  Armenia  was  Armenia  no  longer.  But  op- 
erations, as  I  have  said,  were  conducted  in  a 
more  leisurely  manner  elsewhere,  and  the  agony 
of  that  butchery  protracted.  But  Jemal  got  to 
work  at  once  in  the  thickly  populated  district 
round  Zeitun.  He  had  had  no  success  in  the 
campaign  of  the  winter  in  the  direction  of  the 
Suez  Canal,  and  his  troops  were  hungry  for 
some  sort  of  victory.  The  Zeitunlis  were  hardy 
independent  mountaineers,  who  were  possessed 
of  arms,  and  Jemal  thought  it  more  prudent  not 
to  dally  with  deportations,  but  conduct  a  reg- 
ular campaign  against  them.  For  two  or  three 
months  they  resisted,  entrenching  themselves  in 
the  hiUs,  but  they  could  not  hold  out  against 
artillery  and  the  modern  apparatus  of  war,  and 
the  whole  tribe  was  wiped  out.  That  done, 
Jemal  became  Jemal  the  Great  by  reason  of  his 
national  services,  and  paid  a  visit  to  Germany. 
On  his  return  we  shall  hear  of  him  again. 

Meanwhile,  from  all  the  reports  that  have 
arrived  from  missionaries  and  others,  we  may 
take  one  or  two,  almost  at  random.  At  certain 
places,  as  in  the  governments  of  Ismid,  Angora 
and  Diarbekr,  the  Armenian  population  was 
completely  wiped  out.    Sometimes  tortures  were 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     91 

added,  as  at  a  certain  Anatolian  town  where 
there  was  a  big  Armenian  school,  in  which  a 
number  of  professors  and  instructors,  some  of 
whom  had  studied  in  America,  in  Scotland,  and 
in  Germany,  had  for  years  been  working. 
What  happened  to  them  was  this : — 

(1)  Professor  A.  served  the  College  thirty- 
five  years,  and  taught  Turkish  and  history.  He 
was  arrested  without  charge,  the  hair  of  his 
head  and  beard  were  pulled  out  in  order  to  se- 
cure damaging  confessions.  He  was  starved 
and  hung  up  by  the  arms  for  a  day  and  a  night 
and  repeatedly  beaten.    He  was  then  murdered. 

(2)  Professor  B.,  who  had  served  the  College 
thirty-three  years,  and  taught  mathematics, 
suffered  the  same  fate. 

(3)  Professor  C,  head  of  the  preparatory 
department,  had  served  the  College  for  twenty 
years.  He  was  made  to  witness  the  spectacle 
of  a  man  being  beaten  almost  to  death,  and  be- 
came mentally  deranged.  He  was  murdered 
with  his  family. 

(4)  Professor  D.,  who  taught  mental  and 
moral  sciences,  was  treated  in  the  same  way  as 
Professor  A.  He  also  had  three  finger  nails 
pulled  out  by  the  roots,  and  was  subsequently 
murdered. 

Similarly,  at  Diarbekr,  the  Armenians  were 


92  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

collected  in  batches  of  600,  taken  out  of  the 
town,  and  killed  to  the  last  man.  Among  them 
was  the  Armenian  Archbishop;  his  eyes  and 
nails  were  dragged  out  before  he  was  butchered. 

Or  let  us  take  a  look  at  some  of  the  collecting 
camps.  At  one,  described  by  an  eye-witness, 
we  find  that  the  convoy  had  arrived  after  sev- 
eral months  of  travel.  More  than  half  were 
already  dead,  they  had  been  pillaged  by  bandits 
and  Kurds  seven  times.  They  were  forbidden 
to  drink  water  when  they  passed  by  a  stream, 
three-quarters  of  the  young  women  and  girls 
had  been  kidnapped,  the  rest  were  compelled  to 
sleep  with  the  gendarmes  who  conducted  them. 
At  Osmanieh  it  was  decided  to  deport  the 
women  and  children  by  train.  They  lay  about 
the  station  starving  and  fever-stricken.  When 
the  train  arrived  many  were  jostled  on  to  the 
line,  and  the  driver  yelled  with  joy,  crying  out, 
**Did  you  see  how  I  smashed  them  up?" 

At  another  camp  typhus  broke  out ;  those  who 
died  of  it  were  left  unburied,  as  vouched  for  by 
a  Turkish  officer,  in  order  to  increase  the  infec- 
tion. .  .  . 

Urfa  was  another  collecting  camp  for  the  Ar- 
menians in  that  district,  and  the  following  ac- 
count is  based  on  the  information  of  an  eye- 
witness.   Here,  before  the  concentration  began, 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QIT^STION     93 

the  Armenians  living  in  the  town  offered  re- 
sistance to  the  Turks,  and  held  out  until  Fahri 
Bey,  second  in  command  to  Jemal  the  Great, 
arrived  with  artillery,  bombarded  the  town,  and 
massacred  every  Armenian  there.  Quiet  being 
thus  restored,  the  bands  of  deported  began  to 
arrive.  They  came  by  rail  or  on  foot,  and,  with 
the  Prussian  love  of  tabulation,  were  divided 
into  three  groups. 

The  first  group  consisted  of  old  men,  old 
women,  and  young  children.  They,  guarded  by 
gendarmes,  were  sent  marching  through  the 
desert  to  Deir-el-Zor.  Few,  if  any,  ever  arrived 
there,  all  dying  by  the  way. 

The  second  group,  consisting  of  able-bodied 
men,  was  led  off  in  batches  and  slaughtered. 
Among  them  were  Zohrab  and  Vartkes,  Ar- 
menian deputies,  who  had  been  brought  there 
from  Constantinople. 

The  third  group  consisted  of  young  marriage- 
able girls.  Some,  perhaps,  found  their  way  into 
harems. 

From  Aleppo  (one  of  the  final  concentration 
camps  before  such  as  were  left  of  the  convoys 
set  forth  for  their  goal,  the  swamps  or  the 
desert  round  Deir-el-Zor)  we  have  the  detailed 
evidence  of  Dr.  Martin  Niepage,  High  Grade 
teacher  in  the  German  Technical  School.    This 


94  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

gentleman,  with  a  courage  and  a  humanity  to 
which  the  highest  tribute  must  be  paid,  ad- 
dressed a  report  of  protest  to  the  German  Am- 
bassador at  Constantinople,  and  wrote  an  open 
letter  to  the  Reichstag  on  the  subject  of  what 
he  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  in  that  town.  In 
his  preliminary  matter  he  speaks  as  follows : — 

''In  dilapidated  caravanserais  I  found  quan- 
tities of  dead,  many  corpses  being  half -decom- 
posed, and  others  still  living  among  them  who 
were  soon  to  breathe  their  last.  In  other  yards 
I  found  quantities  of  sick  and  dying  people, 
whom  nobody  was  looking  after.  .  .  .  We  teach- 
ers and  our  pupils  had  to  pass  them  every  day. 
Every  time  we  went  out  we  saw  through  the 
open  windows  their  pitiful  forms,  emaciated  and 
wrapped  in  rags.  In  the  morning  our  school 
children,  on  their  way  through  the  narrow 
streets,  had  to  push  past  the  two-wheeled  ox- 
carts on  which  every  day,  from  eight  to  ten 
rigid  corpses  without  coffin  or  shroud,  were 
carried  away,  their  arms  and  legs  trailing  out 
of  the  vehicle.'' 

From  the  report  itself : — 

"Out  of  convoys  which,  when  they  left  their 
homes  on  the  Armenian  plateau,  numbered  from 
two  to  three  thousand  men,  women,  and  chil- 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     95 

dren,  only  two  or  three  hundred  survivors  ar- 
rived here  in  the  south.  The  men  were  slaugh- 
tered on  the  way,  the  women  and  girls,  with  the 
exception  of  the  old,  the  ugly  and  those  who 
are  stiU  children,  have  been  abused  by  Turkish 
soldiers  and  officers.  .  .  .  Even  when  they  are 
fording  rivers  they  do  not  allow  those  dying  of 
thirst  to  drink.  All  the  nourishment  they  re- 
ceive is  a  daily  ration  of  a  little  meal  sprinkled 
on  their  hands.  .  .  .  Opposite  the  German  Tech- 
nical School  at  Aleppo,  a  mass  of  about  four 
hundred  emaciated  forms,  the  remnant  of  such 
convoys,  is  lying  in  one  of  the  caravanserais. 
There  are  about  a  hundred  children  (boys  and 
girls)  among  them,  from  five  to  seven  years  old. 
Most  of  them  are  suffering  from  typhoid  and 
dysentery.  When  one  enters  the  yard,  one  has 
the  impression  of  entering  a  madhouse.  If  one 
brings  food,  one  notices  that  they  have  forgotten 
how  to  eat.  ...  If  one  gives  them  bread,  they 
put  it  aside  indifferently.  They  just  lie  there 
quietly  waiting  for  death." 

Dr.  Niepage  wrote  this  report  in  the  hope  of 
saving  such  as  then  (1915)  survived.  No  notice 
whatever  was  taken  of  it,  and  his  postscript, 
written  in  May  1916,  records  the  fact  that  ''the 
exiles  encamped  at  Ras-el-Ain  on  the  Bagdad 


96  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Railway,  estimated  at  20,000  men,  women  and 
children,  were  slaughtered  to  the  last  one. '  *  ^ 

In  Dr.  Niepage's  view,  as  I  have  stated  else- 
where, the  Germans  are  directly  responsible  for 
the  continuance  of  the  massacres.  Such,  too,  is 
the  opinion,  he  tells  us,  of  the  educated  Moslems, 
and  his  courage  in  stating  this  has  lost  him  his 
post  at  Aleppo.  It  is  to  be  sincerely  hoped  that 
he  has  escaped  the  fate  of  a  certain  Dr.  Lepsius, 
who,  for  drawing  attention  to  the  fact  that  Ger- 
many allowed  the  Armenian  massacres,  has  been 
arrested  for  high  treason. 

Before  the  end  of  1915  the  German  authorl 
ties,  who  had  refused  to  interfere  in  the  mas- 
sacres,  and  both  in  the  oflBcial  press  and  through 
official  utterances  had  expressed  their  support 
of  this  Ottomanisation  of  the  Empire,  began  to 
think  that  you  might  have  too  much  of  a  good 
thing,  and  that  the  massacres  had  really  gone 
far  enough.  Their  reason  was  clear  and  ex- 
plicit: there  would  be  a  very  serious  shortage 

^  It  is  right  to  add  that  at  Aleppo  an  oflSicer  called  Bekir 
Sami  guarded  50,000  Armenians  whom  he  had  collected  from 
neighbouring  districts,  who  were  threatened  with  massacre,  and 
I  find  that  a  German  missionary  states  that  there  were  45,000 
Armenians  alive  in  Aleppo.  This  forms  confirmatory  evidence, 
but  at  the  same  time  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  they  were 
not  subsequently  deported  to  Deir-el-Zor.  In  this  case  it  is 
highly  improbable  that  any  survive. 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     97 

of  labour  in  the  beet-growing  industry  and  in 
the  harvest-fields,  for  which  they  had  sent  grain 
and  artificial  manures  from  Germany.  There 
had  been  some  talk,  they  said,  of  saving  500,000 
Armenians  out  of  the  race,  but,  in  the  way 
things  were  going  on,  it  seemed  that  the  rem- 
nant would  not  nearly  approach  that  figure. 
"Would  not  the  great  Ottomanisers  temper  their 
patriotism  with  a  little  clemency?  Talaat  Bey 
disagreed:  he  wanted  to  make  a  complete  job 
of  it,  but  Jemal  the  Great,  fresh  from  his  visit 
to  Germany,  supported  the  idea,  and,  in  spite 
of  Talaat 's  opposition,  made  a  spectacular  ex- 
hibition of  clemency,  in  which,  beyond  doubt, 
we  can  trace  an  "Imitatio  Imperatoris, "  in  the 
following  manner. 

There  was  at  the  time  a  large  convoy  of  men 
and  women  in  Constantinople  which  was  to  be 
led  out  for  murder  and  deportation,  and  Jemal 
gave  orders  that  it  should  be  spared  and  sent 
back  to  its  highland  home.  He  gave  orders  also 
that  the  entire  convoy  should  be  informed  who 
was  their  saviour,  and  should  be  led  in  proces- 
sion past  his  house  and  show  their  gratitude. 
All  day  the  sorry  pageant  lasted,  the  ragged, 
half-starved  crowd  streamed  by  the  house  of 
Jemal  the  Great,  with  murmurs  of  thanksgiving 
and  uplifted  hands,  and  all  manner  of  obei- 


98  CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

sances,  while  Jemal  the  Great  stood  in  his  porch 
with  stern,  impassive  face,  and  hand  on  his 
sword-hilt  in  the  best  Potsdam  manner,  and 
acknowledged  these  thanksgivings.  .  .  .  ^ 

Here,  then,  is  the  absurd,  the  Williamesque 
side  of  this  ludicrous  popinjay,  Jemal  the  Great, 
and  it  contains  not  only  the  obvious  seeds  of 
laughter,  but  the  more  helpful  seeds  of  hope. 
He  has  a  strong  hand  on  the  very  efficient  army 
of  Syria,  and  his  visits  to  Berlin  seem  perhaps 
to  have  turned  his  head  not  quite  in  the  direc- 
tion that  the  Master-egalo-megalomaniacof  Ber- 
lin intended.  I  gather  that  Jemal  the  Great  was 
not  so  much  impressed  by  the  magnificence  of 
William  ii.  as  to  fall  dazzled  and  prone  at  the 
Imperial  feet,  and  lick  with  enraptured  tongue 
the  imperial  boot  polish,  but  rather  to  be  in- 
spired to  do  the  same  himself,  to  become  the 
God-anointed  of  the  newly  acquired  German 
province,  which  is  Turkey,  and  make  a  Potsdam 
of  his  o\vTi.  This  is  only  a  guess,  but  the  con- 
duct of  Jemal  the  Great  in  the  matter  of  these 
Armenian  refugees,  and  in  other  affairs,  has 
been  distinctly  imperial.    In  June  of  this  year, 

*In  support  of  Jemal 's  claim  to  clemency  it  must  be  added 
that,  according  to  a  report  coming  from  Alexandria,  he  hanged 
twelve  of  the  worst  assassins  sent  to  Syria  as  ringleaders  of 
the  massacres.     I  cannot  find  corroborr.tion  of  this. 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     99 

for  instance,  he  telegraphed  to  H.  E.  the  Vali 
of  Syria,  and  an  extract  from  his  text  is  truly 
Potsdamish.  *'One  and  a  half  million  of  sand- 
bags," he  wrote,  "are  required  for  the  fortress 
of  Gaza.  .  .  .  The  bags  should  be  made,  if  nec- 
essary, of  all  the  silk-hangings  in  houses  of 
Syria  and  Palestine."  With  his  army  behind 
him,  he  has  twice  already  defied  the  orders  of 
Talaat,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  he  is  the 
coming  Strong  Man  of  the  effete  Empire  with 
whom  it  would  be  well  worth  while  to  make 
friends,  even  at  a  highish  price.  The  Allied 
Powers  should  keep  an  undazzled  ey€  on  him, 
for  it  is  quite  possible  that,  having  defied  Talaat 
successfully,  he  may  go  on  to  defy  the  real 
rulers  of  Turkey,  who  live  in  Berlin.  His 
Syrian  army,  from  such  sources  as  are  avail- 
able, appears  to  be  more  efficient  than  any  other 
body  of  troops  the  Turks  can  put  into  the  field, 
and  he  has  them  in  control.  Probably  in  the 
winter  of  1917-1918  our  troops  will  come  into 
collision  with  them.  But  in  the  interval,  also 
quite  probably,  Jemal  the  Great  may  resent 
German  superintendence.^ 

But  in  addition  to  his  ludicrous  side,  there  is 
in  him  a  refined  hypocrisy  and  a  subtle  cruelty 

*See  note  at  end  of  this  chapter. 


100        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

worthy  of  Abdul  Hamid.     One  instance  will 
suffice. 

There  had  been  some  talk  that  at  certain  of 
these  concentration  camps  there  was  no  water 
supply,  and  he  gave  orders,  did  Jemal  the 
Great  and  the  Merciful,  that  water  should  be 
sent.  A  train  consisting  of  trucks  of  water  ac- 
cordingly was  despatched  to  one  of  those  camps, 
situated  in  the  desert,  with  no  supply  nearer 
than  six  miles,  and  an  eye-witness  describes  its 
arrival.  The  mob  of  Armenians,  mad  with 
thirst,  surrounded  it,  and,  since  everything  must 
be  done  in  an  orderly  and  seemly  manner,  were 
beaten  back  by  the  Turkish  guards,  and  made  to 
stand  at  a  due  distance  for  the  distribution. 
And  when  those  ranks,  with  their  parched 
throats  and  sun-cracked  lips,  were  all  ready,  the 
Turkish  guards  opened  the  taps  of  the  reser- 
voirs, and  allowed  the  whole  of  their  contents 
to  run  away  into  the  sand.  Whether  Jemal  the 
Great  planned  that,  or  whether  it  was  but  a 
humorous  freak  on  the  part  of  the  officials,  I 
cannot  say.  But  as  a  refinement  of  cruelty  I 
have,  outside  the  page  of  Poe's  tales,  only  once 
come  across  anything  to  equal  it,  and  that  in  a 
letter  from  the  Times'  correspondent  at  Berne 
on  April  11,  1917.  He  describes  the  treatment 
of  English  prisoners  in  Germany :    * '  An  equally 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION    101 

conimon  entertainment  with  those  women  (Ger- 
man Red  Cross  nurses)  was  to  offer  a  wounded 
man  a  glass,  perhaps,  of  water,  then,  standing 
just  outside  his  reach,  to  pour  it  slowly  on  the 
ground."  Could  those  sisters  of  mercy  have 
read  the  account  of  Jemal's  clemency,  or  is  it 
merely  an  instance  of  the  parallelism  of  similar 
minds  ? 

So  the  empty  train  returned,  and  Jemal  the 
Great  caused  it  to  be  known  in  Berlin  that  he 
was  active  in  securing  a  proper  water  supply 
for  the  famous  agricultural  settlements  in  the 
desert,  and  loud  were  the  encomiums  in  the 
press  of  the  Central  Powers  over  the  colonisa- 
tion of  Syria  by  the  Armenians,  the  progress 
and  enlightenment  of  the  Turks,  and  the  skilful 
and  humane  organisation  of  Jemal  the  Great. 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  estimating  to-day  the 
number  of  Armenian  men  who  survive  in  the 
Turkish  Empire.  All  appeals  to  the  Prussian 
overlords,  such  as  were  made  by  Dr.  Niepage, 
and  the  belated  remonstrance  of  the  Prussians 
themselves  when  they  foresaw  a  dearth  of  la- 
bour for  the  husbandry  of  beets  and  cereals,  fell 
on  deaf  ears,  and  I  cannot  see  any  reason  for 
supposing  that  Armenian  men  exist  any  more 
in  the  Empire.  It  is  more  difficult  to  judge  of 
the  numbers  of  women  who,  by  accepting  the 


10^         CKESGENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Moslem  creed  and  the  harems,  are  still  alive. 
Certainly  in  some  districts  there  were  consider- 
able ' '  conversions, ' '  and  Dr.  Niepage  rates  them 
as  many  thousands.  But  the  willingness  to  ac- 
cept those  conditions  was  not  always  a  guar- 
antee for  their  being  granted,  and  I  have  read 
reports  where  would-be  converts  were  told  that 
'^ religion"  was  a  more  serious  matter  than  that, 
and,  instead  of  being  accepted,  they  were  mas- 
sacred. But  even  if  Dr.  Niepage  is  right,  we 
can  scarcely  consider  these  women  as  constitut- 
ing an  Armenian  element  any  more  in  the  coun- 
try. The  work  of  butchery,  the  torture,  the 
long-drawn  agonies  of  those  inhuman  pilgrim- 
ages have  come  to  an  end  because  there  are  no 
more  Armenian  victims  available.  Apart  from 
those  who  escaped  over  the  Russian  frontier, 
and  the  handful  who  sought  refuge  in  Egypt, 
the  race  exists  no  longer,  and  the  seal  has  been 
set  on  the  bloodiest  deed  that  ever  stained  the 
annals  of  the  barbarous  Osmanlis.  It  is  not  in 
revenge  on  the  murderers,  but  in  order  to  res- 
cue the  other  subject  peoples,  Arabs,  Greeks, 
Jews,  who  are  still  enclosed  within  the  frontiers 
of  the  Empire,  that  the  Allied  Governments,  in 
their  answer  to  President  Wilson,  stated  that 
among  their  aims  as  belligerents,  was  the  ''lib- 
eration of  the  peoples  who  now  lie  beneath  the 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     103 

murderous  tyranny  of  the  Turks."  There  is 
defined  their  irreducible  demand:  never  again, 
after  peace  returns,  will  the  Turk  be  allowed  to 
control  the  destinies  of  races  not  his  own.  Too 
long  already — and  to  their  disgrace  be  it  spoken 
— have  the  civilised  and  Christian  nations  of 
Europe  tolerated  at  their  very  doors  a  tyranny 
that  has  steadily  grown  more  murderous  and 
more  monstrous,  because  they  feared  the  upset 
of  the  Balance  of  Power.  Now  at  least  such 
Powers  as  value  national  honour,  and  regard  a 
national  promise  as  something  more  than  a 
gabble  of  ink  on  a  scrap  of  paper,  have  resolved 
that  they  will  suffer  the  tyranny  of  the  Turk 
over  his  alien  subject  peoples  to  continue  no 
longer.  It  is  the  least  they  can  do  (and  un- 
happily the  most)  to  redeem  the  century-long 
neglect  of  their  duty.  Even  now,  as  we  shall 
see  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  the  direst  peril 
threatens  those  other  peoples  who  at  present 
groan  under  Turkish  rule,  and  we  can  but  pray 
that  the  end  of  the  war  will  come  before  Arabs 
or  Greeks  or  Jews  suffer  the  same  fate  as  has 
exterminated  the  Armenians.  Too  often  have 
we  been  too  late;  we  must  only  hope  that  an- 
other item  will  not  have  to  be  added  to  that 
miserable  list,  and  that,  when  the  day  of  reckon- 
ing comes,  no  half-hearted  and  pusillanimous 


104         CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

policy  will  stay  our  hands  from  the  complete 
execution  of  that  to  which  we  stand  pledged. 
The  Balance  of  Power  has  gone  the  way  of 
other  rickety  makeshifts,  but  there  must  be  no 
makeshift  in  our  dealings  with  the  Turk,  no 
compromise  and  no  delay.  What  shall  be  done 
with  those  who  planned  and  executed  the  great- 
est massacres  known  to  history  matters  little; 
let  them  be  hanged  as  high  as  Haman,  and  have 
done  with  them.  But  what  does  matter  is  that 
at  no  future  time  must  it  be  in  the  power  of  a 
Government  that  has  never  been  other  than  bar- 
baric and  butcherous,  to  do  again  as  it  has  done 
before. 

Note  on  Jemal  the  Great 

Jemal  the  Great  has  very  obligingly  done  what  I 
suggested  we  might  expect  him  to  do,  and  has  kicked 
against  the  German  control  of  the  Syrian  army.  Gen- 
eral von  Falkenhayn  was  sent  to  take  supreme  com- 
mand, and  on  June  28th  of  this  year  Jemal  the  Great 
refused  to  receive  orders  from  him.  In  consequence 
General  von  Falkenhayn  refused  responsibility  for 
any  offensive  movement  there  if  Jemal  remained  in 
command. 

This  promised  well  for  trouble  between  Turks  and 
Germans,  but  we  must  not,  I  am  afraid,  build  very 
high  hopes  on  it,  for  Germany  has  dealt  with  the  situ- 
ation in  a  masterly  manner.  Jemal  was  already  Min- 
ister of  Marine  as  well  as  commander  of  the  Syrian 
army,  so  the  Emperor  asked  him  to  pay  another  visit 


END  OF  THE  ARMENIAN  QUESTION     105 

to  Berlin,  and  he  has  been  visiting  Krupp  's  works  and 
German  naval  yards,  and  we  shall  find  probably  that 
in  the  future  his  activities  will  be  marine  rather  than 
militarj^  and  that  von  Falkenhayn  will  have  a  free 
hand  in  Syria. 

But  this  will  prove  rather  disappointing  for  Jemal, 
since  it  seems  beyond  mere  coincidence  that  towards 
the  end  of  August  Herr  von  Kuhlmann,  the  new  Ger- 
man Foreign  Minister,  induced  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment (while  Jemal  was  at  Berlin)  to  put  their  navy 
and  their  merchant  fleet  under  the  orders  of  the  Ger- 
man Admiralty,  and  already  many  Turkish  naval 
officers  have  been  replaced  by  Germans.  Thus  Jemal 
will  find  himself  deprived  of  his  military  command, 
because  the  navy  so  urgently  needed  his  guiding  hand, 
while  his  guiding  hand  over  the  navy  will  be  itself 
guided  by  the  German  Admiralty.  ...  In  fact,  it 
looks  rather  like  checkmate  for  Jemal  the  Great,  and 
an  end  to  the  trouble  he  might  have  given  the  Ger- 
man control. 

On  the  eve  of  his  leaving  Germany,  as  yet  uncon- 
scious probably  of  the  subordination  of  the  entire 
Turkish  fleet  to  the  German  Admiralty,  he  gave  an  in- 
terview to  a  representative  of  the  Cologne  Gazette, 
which  deserves  more  than  that  ephemeral  appearance. 
It  shows  Jemal  the  Great  in  a  sort  of  hypnotic  trance 
induced  at  Potsdam.  "The  German  fleet,"  he  says, 
"is  simply  spotless  in  its  power,  and  a  model  for  all 
states  which  need  a  modem  navy — a  model  which  can- 
not be  surpassed. "  .  .  .  He  went  for  a  cruise  in  a  sub- 
marine which  proceeded  "so  smoothly,  elegantly, 
calmly  and  securely  that  I  had  the  impression  of 
cruising  in  a  great  steamship."  ...  He  was  taken  to 
Belgium,  and  describes  the  "idyllic  life  there":  in  the 
towns  "the  people  go  for  walks  all  day  long,"  and  in 
the  country  the  peasants  blithely  gather  in  the  harvest 


106        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

with  the  help  of  happy  prisoners."  (He  does  not  tell 
us  where  the  harvest  goes  to,  any  more  than  the  Ger- 
mans tell  us  where  the  Turkish  harvests  go  to.)  He 
was  taken  to  General  Headquarters,  which  he  describes 
as  "majestic. ' '  Finally  he  was  taken  into  the  presence 
of  the  All-Highest,  and  seems  to  have  emerged  in  the 
condition  in  which  Moses  came  down  from  Sinai.  .  .  . 
But  one  must  not  altogether  despair  of  Jemal  the 
Great.  It  is  still  possible  that,  on  his  return  to  Con- 
stantinople, when  he  found  that  his  position  as  Minis- 
ter of  Marine  was  but  a  clerkship  in  the  German 
Admiralty,  the  hypnotic  trance  began  to  pass  off,  and 
his  ambitions  to  re-assert  themselves.  He  may  yet 
give  trouble  to  the  Germans  if  properly  handled. 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Question  of  Syria  and  Palestine 

It  is  impossible  to  leave  this  heart-rending  tale 
of  the  sufferings  of  the  Armenian  people  under 
the  Turks  without  some  account  of  that  devoted 
band  of  American  missionaries  who,  with  a 
heroism  unsurpassed,  and  perhaps  unequalled, 
so  eagerly  sacrificed  themselves  to  the  ravages 
of  pestilence  and  starvation  in  order  to  alleviate 
the  horrors  that  descended  on  the  people  to 
whom  they  had  been  sent.  Often  they  were 
forcibly  driven  from  the  care  of  their  flocks, 
often  in  the  extermination  of  their  flocks  there 
was  none  left  whom  they  could  shepherd,  but 
wherever  a  remnant  still  lingered  there  re- 
mained these  dauntless  and  self-sacrificing  men 
and  women,  regardless  of  everything  except  the 
cause  to  which  they  had  devoted  themselves. 
They  recked  nothing  of  the  dangers  to  which 
they  exposed  themselves  so  long  as  there  was 
a  child  or  a  woman  or  a  man  whom  they  could 
feed  or  nurse.  Terrible  as  were  the  sufferings 
through  which  the  Armenians  passed,  they  must 

107 


108        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

have  been  infinitely  more  unbearable  had  it  not 
been  for  these  American  missionaries ;  small  as 
was  the  remnant  that  escaped  into  the  safety  of 
Persia  or  Russian  Trans-Caucasia,  their  num- 
bers must  have  been  halved  had  it  not  been  for 
the  heroism  of  these  men  and  women.  While 
the  German  Consuls  contented  themselves  with 
a  few  faint  protests  to  their  Ambassador  at 
Constantinople,  followed  by  an  acquiescence  of 
silence,  the  missionaries  constituted  themselves 
into  a  Red  Cross  Society  of  intrepid  workers, 
and,  as  one  well-qualified  authority  tells  us, 
''suffered  as  many  casualties  from  typhus  and 
physical  exhaustion  as  any  proportionate  body 
of  workers  on  the  European  battlefields." 
Fully  indeed  did  they  live  up  to  the  mandate  of 
the  American  board  that  sent  them  out:  ''Your 
great  business  is  with  the  fundamental  doctrines 
and  duties  of  the  Gospel." 

At  the  opening  of  the  European  War  the 
American  Missions  had  been  at  work  for  nearly 
a  hundred  years,  and  were  disseminated  over 
Anatolia  and  Armenia.  They  had  opened  163 
Protestant  churches  and  450  schools,  they  estab- 
lished hospitals,  and  in  every  possible  way 
spread  civilisation  in  a  country  where  the  spirit 
of  the  governing  class  was  barbarism.  It  was 
not  their  object  to  proselytise.    "Let  the  Ar- 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  109 

menian  remain  an  Armenian  if  he  will,"  so  ran 
the  instructions  from  which  I  have  already 
quoted,  ''the  Greek  a  Greek,  the  Nestorian  a 
Nestorian,  the  Oriental  an  Oriental,"  and  in  the 
same  wise  and  open-minded  spirit  they  encour- 
aged native  Protestant  Churches  which  were 
independent  of  them  and  largely  self-support- 
ing. Naturally  in  a  country  governed  by  mon- 
sters like  Abdul  Hamid  and  Enver  Pasha  in 
later  days,  they  earned  the  enmity  which  is  the 
tribute  of  barbarians  to  those  who  stand  for 
civilisation,  and  when,  owing  to  the  extermina- 
tion or  flight  of  their  Armenian  flocks,  they  were 
left  without  a  charge,  and  their  schools  were 
closed,  we  find  a  pasan  of  self -congratulation  go- 
ing up  from  the  Turkish  press  inspired  by  the 
butchers  of  Armenia.  But  till  the  massacres 
and  the  flight  were  complete,  they  gave  them- 
selves to  the  "duties  of  the  Gospel,"  and  their 
deeds  shine  like  a  star  into  the  blackness  of  that 
night  of  murder. 

I  will  take  as  an  example  of  the  superb  hero- 
ism of  those  men  and  women  the  diary  of  an 
American  lady  attached  to  the  mission  at  Ur- 
mia, a  document  that,  anonymously,  is  one  of 
the  noblest,  least  self-conscious  records  I  have 
ever  read.  The  period  of  it  extends  over  five 
months. 


110        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Early  in  January  1915  the  Russian  troops 
were  withdrawn  from  Urmia,  which  lies  on  the 
frontier  between  Turkey  and  Persia,  and  simul- 
taneously the  Moslem  population  began  to  plun- 
der the  Christian  villages,  the  inhabitants  of 
which  fled  for  refuge  to  the  missions  in  the  city. 
Talaat's  official  murder-scheme  was  not  com- 
pleted yet,  but  the  Kurds,  together  with  the 
Turks,  had  planned  a  local  massacre  at  Geog- 
tapa,  which  was  stopped  by  the  American  doc- 
tor of  this  mission,  Dr.  Packard,  who,  at  great 
personal  risk,  obtained  an  interview  with  the 
Kurdish  chief,  and  succeeded  in  inducing  him  to 
spare  the  lives  of  the  Christians,  if  they  gave 
up  arms  and  ammunition  and  property.  The 
American  flag  was  hoisted  over  the  Mission 
buildings,  and  before  a  week  was  out  there  were 
over  ten  thousand  refugees  housed  in  the  yards 
md  rooms,  where  they  remained  for  five  months, 
the  places  of  the  dead  being  taken  by  fresh  in- 
fluxes. The  dining-room,  the  sitting-room,  the 
church,  the  school,  were  all  given  over  to  these 
destitute  people,  and  from  the  beginning  fear 
of  massacre,  as  well  as  prevalence  of  disease, 
haunted  the  camp.  It  was  impossible  to  move 
dead  bodies  outside;  they  had  to  be  buried  in 
the  thronged  yards,  and  every  day  children  were 
born.    B  ii;  here  is  the  spirit  that  animated  their 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  111 

protectors.  ' '  We  have  jiist  had  a  Praise  meet- 
ing," records  the  diarist  at  the  close  of  the  first 
fortnight,  "with  fifty  or  sixty  we  could  gather 
from  the  halls  and  rooms  near,  and  we  feel  more 
cheerful.  We  thought  if  Paul  and  Silas,  with 
their  stripes,  could  sing  praises  in  prison,  so 
could  we." 

The  weeks,  of  which  each  day  was  a  proces- 
sion of  hours  too  full  of  work  to  leave  time  for 
anxiety,  began  to  enrol  themselves  into  months, 
and  the  hope  of  rescue  by  a  Russian  advance 
made  their  hearts  sick,  so  long  was  it  deferred. 
Refugees  from  neighbouring  villages  kept  arriv- 
ing, and  there  was  the  constant  problem  before 
these  devoted  friends  of  their  flock,  as  to  how 
to  feed  them.  All  such  were  welcome,  and  eager 
was  the  welcome  they  received,  though  every 
foot  of  space  in  the  buildings  and  in  the  yards 
was  occupied.  But  somehow  they  managed  to 
make  room  for  all  who  came,  and  for  those  vil- 
lagers who,  under  threat  of  torture  and  mas- 
sacre, had  apostatised,  there  was  but  yearning 
and  sorrow,  but  never  a  word  of  blame  or  bitter- 
ness. Sometimes  there  was  a  visit  of  Turkish 
troops  to  search  for  concealed  Russians,  and,  as 
our  diarist  remarks,  "We  can't  complain  of  the 
monotony  of  life,  for  we  never  know  what  is 
going  to  happen  next.    On  Tuesday  morning  we 


112         CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

had  a  wedding  in  my  room  here.  The  boy  and 
girl  were  simple  villagers.  .  .  .  The  wedding 
was  fixed  for  the  Syrian  New  Year,  but  the 
Kurds  came  and  carried  off  wedding  clothes 
and  everything  else  in  the  house.  They  all  fled 
here,  and  were  married  in  the  old  dirty  gar- 
ments they  were  wearing  when  they  ran  for 
their  lives.  .  .  .  Their  only  present  was  a  little 
tea  and  sugar  that  I  tied  up  in  a  handkerchief 
and  gave  to  the  bride. ' ' 

The  eternal  feminine  and  the  eternal  human 
speak  there;  and  there,  for  this  gallantest  of 
women,  were  two  keys  that  locked  up  the  end- 
less troubles  and  anxieties  that  ceased  not  day 
or  night.  But  sometimes  the  flesh  was  weak, 
and  in  the  privacy  of  her  diary  she  says,  * '  How 
long,  0  Lord?"  But  for  that  there  was  the 
master-key  that  unlocks  all  wards,  and  a  little 
further  on  we  read,  ''One  of  the  verses  that 
helps  to  keep  my  faith  steady  is,  'He  that 
spared  not  His  own  Son. '  For  weeks  we  have 
had  no  word  from  the  outside  world,  but  we 
'  rest  in  Jehovah  and  wait  patiently  for  Him. '  ' ' 

The  conditions  inside  the  crowded  yards  grew 
steadily  worse.  Dysentery  was  rife,  and  the 
deaths  from  it  in.  that  narrow  space  averaged 
thirty  a  day.  The  state  of  the  sufferers  grew 
so  terrible  that  it  was  difficult  to  get  any  one 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  113 

to  look  after  them  at  all,  and  many  were  lying 
in  the  open  yards,  and  the  weather,  which  hith- 
erto had  been  warm,  got  cold,  and  snow  fell. 
It  was  with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  food 
could  be  obtained  for  those  in  health,  and  that 
of  a  kind  utterly  unsuitable  to  the  sick,  while 
in  the  minds  of  their  nurses  was  the  bitter 
knowledge  that  with  proper  diet  hundreds  of 
lives  could  have  been  saved,  and  hundreds  of 
cases  of  illness  avoided. 

For  the  dead  there  was  but  a  small  percentage 
of  coffins  available,  and  **the  great  mass  are 
just  dropped  into  the  great  trench  of  rotting 
humanity  (in  the  yard).  As  I  stand  at  my  win- 
dow I  see  one  after  another  of  the  little  bodies 
carried  by  .  .  .  and  the  condition  of  the  living 
is  more  pitiful  than  that  of  the  dead — hungry, 
ragged,  dirty,  sick,  cold,  wet,  swarming  with 
vermin.  Not  for  all  the  wealth  of  all  the  rulers 
of  Europe  would  I  bear  for  one  hour  their  re- 
sponsibility for  the  suffering  and  misery  of  this 
one  little  corner  of  the  world  alone.  A  helpless 
unarmed  Christian  community  turned  over  to 
the  sword  and  the  passion  of  Islam!" 

On  the  top  of  this  came  an  epidemic  of  ty- 
phoid, twenty-seven  cases  on  the  first  day.  Out- 
side in  the  town  the  Turkish  Consul  began  hang- 
ing Christians,  and  the  missioners  were  allowed 


114        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

to  take  the  bodies  and  bury  them.  There  were 
threats  that  the  mission  would  be  entered,  and 
all  young  men  (possible  combatants)  killed,  but 
this  fear  was  not  realised.  The  typhoid  in- 
creased, and  the  doctor  of  the  mission  and 
others  of  the  staff  fell  ill  with  it;  but  the  pa- 
tience and  service  of  the  remainder  never  fal- 
tered, while  the  same  spirit  of  uncomplaining 
suffering  animated  the  refugees.  * '  Mr.  M  'Dow- 
ell,"  so  the  diarist  relates,  ''saw  a  tired  and 
weary  woman  with  a  baby  in  her  arms,  sitting 
in  one  of  the  seats,  and  said  to  her,  'Where  do 
you  stay?'  She  said  'Just  here.'  'How  long 
have  you  been  here?'  'Since  the  beginning' 
jtwo  months)  she  replied.  'How  do  you  sleep 
at  night f  'I  lay  the  baby  on  the  desk  in  front 
of  me,  and  I  have  this  post  at  the  back  to  lean 
against.  This  is  a  very  good  place.  Thank  you 
very  much. '  ' ' 

In  April  there  comes  a  break  in  the  diary 
after  the  day  on  which  the  following  entry  is 
made : — 

' '  I  felt  on  Sunday  as  if  I  ought  to  get  my  own 
burial  clothes  ready,  so  as  to  make  as  little 
trouble  as  possible  when  my  time  comes,  for  in 
these  days  we  all  go  about  our  work  knowing 
that  any  one  of  us  may  be  the  next  to  go  down. 
And  yet  I  think  our  friends  would  be  surprised 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  115 

to  see  how  cheerful  we  have  kept,  and  how  many 
occasions  we  find  for  laughing:  for  ludicrous 
things  do  happen.  Then,  too,  after  dwelUng  so 
intimately  with  Death  for  three  months,  he 
doesn't  seem  to  have  so  unfriendly  an  aspect, 
and  the  'Other  Side'  seems  near,  and  our  Pilot 
close  beside  us.  ...  I  find  the  Rock  on  which 
I  can  anchor  in  peace  are  the  words  of  Christ 
Himself:  'Where  I  am,  there  ye  may  be  also.' 
.  .  .  That  is  enough,  to  be  where  He  is.  .  .  .'* 

Then  comes  a  break  of  two  months,  during 
which  the  writer  was  down  with  typhoid.  She 
resumes  again  in  June,  finding  that  death  has 
made  many  changes,  and  gets  back  to  work 
again  at  once  By  that  time  the  Russians  had 
entered  Urmia,  a  thanksgiving  service  was  held, 
the  refugees  dispersed,  and  the  American  Mis- 
sion went  quietly  on  with  its  normal  work. 

Now  I  have  taken  this  one  instance  of  the 
work  of  Americans  at  Urmia  to  show  in  some 
detail  the  character  of  the  work  that  they  were 
doing,  and  the  Christian  and  humanising  influ- 
ence of  it.  But  all  over  Armenia  and  Anatolia 
were  similar  settlements,  and,  as  already  men- 
tioned, at  the  time  of  the  massacres  there  were 
established  there  over  a  hundred  of  their 
ehurches  and  over  four  hundred  schools,  and 
from  these  extracts  which  concern  only  one  not 


116        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

very  large  centre,  it  may  be  gathered  what 
leaven  of  civilising  influence  the  sum  of  their 
energies  must  have  implied.  That  lamp  shone 
steady  and  clear,  a  *' kindly  light"  in  the  dark- 
ness of  Turkish  misrule,  and  in  the  havoc  of 
the  massacres  a  beacon  of  hope,  not  always 
reached  by  those  hapless  refugees.  Indeed  it 
seems  to  have  been  only  on  the  frontier  that  the 
missions  were  able  to  save  those  foredoomed 
hordes  of  fleeing  Christians;  in  Armenia  and 
in  Anatolia  generally  the  massacres  and  ''de- 
portations" were  complete,  and  by  the  end  of 
1915  all  American  missions  were  closed,  for 
there  were  none  to  tend  and  care  for.  Even  if 
the  massacres  had  not  occurred,  the  entry  of 
America  into  the  war  would  have  resulted  in  a 
similar  cessation  of  their  work,  and  most  prob- 
ably in  a  massacre  of  the  American  missioners 
themselves.  Their  withdrawal,  of  course,  was 
hailed  with  a  peacock  scream  of  pride  by  that 
enlightened  body  under  Talaat  and  Enver,  called 
the  New  Turkish  party  of  Progress,  for  their 
presence  was  a  bar  to  the  Turkish  notions  of 
civilisation,  in  that  their  influence  made  for  hu- 
manity, and  health  and  education.  Now  **the 
humiliating  and  dangerous  situation"  (to  quote 
from  the  columns  of  Hilal)  was  put  an  end  to, 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  117 

and  Turkish  progress  could  make  headway 
again. 

Similarly  in  Syria  the  outbreak  of  war  put  an 
end  to  ''the  humiliating  and  dangerous  situa- 
tion" of  the  presence  of  French  schools  and 
missions.  There,  for  many  years,  French  mis- 
sioners  had  done  the  same  work  as  Americans 
in  Armenia,  work  in  every  sense  liberal  and 
civilising,  but  undenominational  in  religious 
matters  and  unproselytising.  That  came  to  an 
end  earlier  than  the  organisations  in  Armenia, 
and  in  Syria  now,  as  over  the  rest  of  the  Turk- 
ish people,  Arabs  and  Jews  and  Greeks  have 
nothing  except  German  influence  and  Kultur  to 
stand  between  them  and  the  spirit  of  Turkish 
progress  of  which  the  Armenian  massacres  were 
the  latest  epiphany.  Germany,  as  we  have  seen, 
stood  by  and  let  the  Armenian  massacres  go  on, 
professing  herself  unable  to  interfere  in  the 
internal  affairs  of  Turkey,  though  at  the  time 
there  was  not  a  single  branch  of  Turkish  indus- 
tries, railways,  telegraphs,  armies,  navies  over 
which  she  had  not  complete  control,  exercising  it 
precisely  as  she  thought  fit. 

It  is  useless,  then,  to  base  any  confidence  in 
the  safety  of  Jews,  Greeks,  and  Arabs  from 
suffering  the  same  fate  as  the  Armenians,  on  a 
veto  from  Germany.    If  it  suits  Germany  to  let 


118        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

those  unfortunate  peoples  be  murdered  or  de- 
ported to  agricultural  colonies,  Germany  will 
assuredly  not  stir  a  finger  on  tlieir  behalf  nor 
prevent  a  repetition  of  the  horrors  I  have  dealt 
with  in  the  previous  chapter.  Sooner  than  risk 
her  hold  over  Turkey  by  enforcing  unacceptable 
demands,  she  will,  unless  other  considerations 
of  self-interest  determine  her,  let  further  mas- 
sacres occur,  if  Talaat  Bey  insists  on  them. 
That  spokesman  of  her  policy,  Ernst  Marre, 
makes  this  perfectly  explicit  in  his  book.  Die 
Turken  und  Wir  nach  dem  Kriege,  upholding 
from  the  German  standpoint  the  right  of  Tur- 
key and  the  wisdom  of  Turkey  in  dealing  with 
her  subject  peoples  as  she  had  dealt  with  the 
Armenians.  ''The  Turkish  State,"  he  tells  us, 
"is  no  united  whole:  Turks,  Arabs,  Greeks, 
Armenians,  Kurds,  cannot  be  welded  together." 
(This,  by  a  somewhat  grim  and  ominous  coinci- 
dence, is  in  exact  accordance  with  a  remark 
made  to  a  Danish  Red  Cross  Sister  by  a  Turk- 
ish gendarme  then  engaged  in  massacring  Ar- 
menians. ' '  First  we  get  rid  of  the  Armenians, ' ' 
he  said,  ''then  the  Greeks,  then  the  Kurds.") 
Or  again,  in  defence  of  the  Armenian  massacres, 
' '  Only  by  energetic  interference  and  by  expell- 
ing of  the  obstinate  Armenian  element,  could 
the  Ottoman  Empire  get  rid  of  a  Russian  do- 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  119 

minion."  Or  again,  ''The  non-Turkish  popula- 
tion of  the  Ottoman  Empire  must  be  Ottoman- 
ised. ' '  Here,  then,  is  the  German  point  of  view : 
the  Ottoman  Government  will  be  right  to  ' '  dis- 
pose of"  its  subject  peoples  as  it  thinks  fit.  So 
far  from  interfering,  Germany  endorses,  and 
German  influence  to-day  is  all  that  stands  be- 
tween ''the  murderous  tyranny"  and  its  subject 
peoples.  French,  English,  and  finally  American 
pressure  can  no  longer,  since  the  entry  of  these 
nations  into  the  war,  be  exorcised  within  the 
frontiers  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  and  the  only 
protection  of  defenceless  aliens  is  the  German 
Government.  It  did  not  stir  a  finger  to  save 
the  Armenians,  until  it  saw  that  depopulation 
threatened  the  prosperity  of  its  industries,  and 
it  is  idle  to  expect  that  it  will  do  more  if  the 
consolidation  of  Turkish  supremacy  demands  a 
further  campaign  of  murder.  Greeks,  Arabs, 
and  Jews  are  all  completely  at  the  mercy  of 
Talaat's  murder-schedules.  The  only  chance 
that  can  save  them  is  that  further  extermina- 
tion may  not  suit  Germany's  political  aims,  and 
that  she  may  find  it  worth  her  while  to  be 
peremptory,  and  forbid  instead  of  endorsing. 

There  are  unhappily  many  signs  that  the 
butchers  of  Constantinople  are  planning  fur- 
ther massacres.    In  February  of  this  year  pre- 


120        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

liminary  measures  were  begun  against  the 
Greeks  settled  in  Anatolia.  Many  were  forcibly 
proselytised,  their  property  was  confiscated, 
and  they  were  forbidden  to  carry  on  their  busi- 
nesses. Deportations  also  occurred,  and  all 
Greeks  were  removed  from  many  villages  in 
Anatolia,  into  the  interior,  presumably  to 
"agricultural  colonies"  such  as  those  provided 
for  Armenians.  They  suffered  terribly  from 
hunger  and  exposure,  and  it  is  estimated  that 
ten  per  cent,  of  them  died  on  their  marches. 
Since  then,  however,  there  has  been  no  more 
heard  of  any  extension  of  those  measures,  and 
there  seems  to  have  been  as  yet  no  massacre  of 
Greeks.  It  is  reasonable  to  infer  that  Germany 
has  in  this  case  intervened.  She  still  hoped  to 
win  Greece  over  to  the  Central  European 
Powers,  and  clearly  any  massacre  of  Greeks  by 
her  own  Allies  was  not  desirable.  King  Con- 
stantine,  among  his  endless  vacillations  and 
pusillanimous  treacheries,  probably  made  a  firm 
protest  on  the  subject.  But  in  the  kaleidoscope 
of  war,  should  Greece  come  to  the  side  of  the 
Allies,  it  seems  most  probable  that  there  will 
occur  a  wholesale  massacre  of  Greeks.  From 
what  we  know  of  the  principles  on  which  Ger- 
man Kultur  is  based,  the  most  optimistic  can 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  121 

scarcely  hope  that  the   very  faintest  remon- 
strance will  emanate  from  Berlin. 

The  case  of  the  Arabs  in  Syria  is  even  more 
precarious.  From  the  moment  that  the  policy 
of  the  Young  Turks  was  evolved,  namely,  to 
consolidate  Osmanli  supremacy  by  the  weaken- 
ing of  its  subject  peoples,  the  Ottoman  Govern- 
ment has  been  waiting  for  its  opportunity  to  get 
rid  of  the  ''Arab  menace."  As  we  have  seen, 
they  began  by  substituting  Turkish  for  Arabic 
as  a  written  language  in  all  official  usages  from 
the  printing  of  the  Koran  and  the  prayers  for 
the  Sultan  down  to  the  legends  on  railway 
tickets.  The  Arab  spirit,  according  to  one  of 
the  spokesmen  of  the  New  Turk  party,  had  to 
be  suppressed,  the  Arab  lands  had  to  become 
Turkish  colonies.  ' '  It  is  a  peculiarly  imperious 
necessity  of  our  existence,"  we  read  in  Jelal 
Xoury  Bey's  propaganda,  "to  Turkise  the  Arab 
lands,  for  the  particularistic  idea  of  nationality 
is  awakening  among  the  younger  generations  of 
Arabs,  and  already  threatens  us  with  a  great 
catastrophe."  Against  the  Arabs  the  Young 
Turks  formed  and  fostered  a  special  animosity; 
they  were  powerful  and  warlike,  and  Enver, 
Talaat,  and  others  saw  that  the  idea  of  an  Os- 
manli supremacy  could  never  be  realised  unless 
very  drastic  measures  were  taken  against  them. 


122        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

The  tenets  of  Islamism,  it  is  true,  forbade  Mos- 
lems to  fight  Moslems,  but  Islamism,  as  a  bind- 
ing force,  was  already  obsolete  in  the  counsels 
of  the  new  regime,  having  given  place  to  Kul- 
tur.  Of  all  their  subject  peoples,  the  Young 
Turks  hated  the  Arabs  the  most,  and,  had  not 
the  European  War  intervened,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  Armenian  massacres,  already  being 
planned,  would  have  been  followed  by  Arab 
massacres.  But  the  armed  and  warlike  Arabian 
tribes  were  not  so  easy  to  deal  with  as  the  de- 
fenceless Armenians,  and  Turkish  troops  could 
not  be  spared  in  sufficient  numbers  to  render  an 
Arab  massacre  the  safe,  pleasant,  and  lucrative 
pursuit  that  massacres  should  be.  But  Jemal 
the  Great,  black  with  his  triumph  over  the  Ar- 
menians at  Zeitun,  was  Military  Governor  of 
Syria,  and,  the  Armenian  question  being  solved, 
he  began  to  get  to  work  on  the  Arab  question. 
Owing  to  the  expulsion  of  the  French  Missions 
from  Syria  in  1914,  we  have  no  such  full  or 
detailed  information  as  we  have  from  Ameri- 
cans in  Armenia,  and  the  following  account  is 
mainly  derived  from  the  Arabic  journal  Mokat- 
tam,  published  in  Cairo,  the  information  in 
which  is  based  on  the  account  given  by  a  Syrian 
refugee.  It  agrees  with  pieces  of  evidence  that 
have  come  to  hand  from  other  sources. 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  123 

Ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  Syria  has 
been  an  area  of  direst  poverty,  starvation,  and 
sickness,  which  have  been  the  natural  co-opera- 
tors in  Jemal's  policy  there.  All  supplies  have 
been  commandeered  for  the  troops  (including 
by  special  clause  from  Potsdam,  the  German 
troops) ;  even  fish  caught  by  the  fishermen  of 
Lebanon  have  to  be  handed  over  to  the  military 
authorities,  and  the  shortage  of  supplies  in 
Smyrna,  for  instance,  is  such  that  at  the  end  of 
1916  there  were  two  hundred  deaths  daily  from 
sheer  starvation,  while  Germany  was  importing 
from  Turkey  hundreds  of  tons  of  corn  and  of 
meat.  Thus  this  was  no  natural  shortage,  for 
though  supplies  were  low  all  over  the  Turkish 
Empire,  there  was  not  dearth  of  that  kind.  It 
was  an  artificial  shortage  made  possible  by 
German  demands,  and  made  intentional  by 
Jemal's  policy.  Beirut  was  in  no  better  case 
than  Smyrna;  Lebanon  perhaps  was  in  sorer 
straits  than  either.  Money  was  equally  scarce, 
and  it  fitted  Jemal's  policy  that  this  should  be 
so,  for  when  Ajnericans  in  Beirut  had  raised 
funds  in  America  for  the  relief  of  the  destitute, 
the  Turkish  Government  forbade  their  distribu- 
tion. Arabs  and  Greeks  were  dying  by  the  hun- 
dred aU  over  the  provinces,  and  the  beneficent 
decrees  of  nature  must  not  be  interfered  with. 


124        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

In  the  streets  of  towns  the  poor  have  been  fight- 
ing over  scraps  of  sugar-cane  and  orange  peel ; 
in  the  country,  to  quote  from  Mokattam,  "no 
sooner  do  wild  plants  and  beans  start  to  grow 
than  the  fields  are  filled  with  women  and  chil- 
dren who  pick  them  and  use  them  as  food." 
Except  for  military  purposes  (including  the  vic- 
tualling of  German  troops)  transportation  has 
ceased  to  exist,  and  this,  too,  was  part  of  the 
policy  of  Jemal  the  Great. 

On  the  heels  of  famine,  like  a  hound  behind 
a  huntsman,  came  typhus.  In  the  province  of 
Aleppo  before  the  summer  of  1916,  over  8000 
persons  had  died  of  it.  Doctors  and  medicines 
were  unobtainable,  for  all  were  requisitioned  for 
the  needs  of  the  army,  and  in  Damascus  and 
Tripoli,  in  Hama  and  Homs,  the  epidemic 
spread  like  a  forest  fire.  No  help  was  sent  from 
Constantinople,  none  was  permitted  to  be 
brought  by  the  charitable  from  abroad,  for  fam- 
ine and  pestilence  among  the  Arabs  were  work- 
ing for  the  policy  of  Jemal  the  Great.  There 
were  no  troops  to  spare  who  should  hasten  on 
the  work,  but  the  work  was  progressing  by 
swift  and  ''natural"  means.  Hunger  and  pesti- 
lence— behold  the  finger  of  Allah  the  God  of 
Love !  How  superior  He  showed  Himself  to  the 
discarded  Allah  of  the  Arabs.    ' '  Ring  down  the 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  125 

curtain,"  said  Jemal  the  Great,  ''and  let  no 
news  of  the  ways  of  Allah  get  abroad!"  So  a 
strict  surveillance  was  established  on  the  coast, 
all  boats  were  chained  to  the  shore,  and  if  any- 
attempted  to  swim  out  to  ships  of  the  Allied 
nations  which  passed,  the  coast  guards  had  or- 
ders to  shoot  him  down.  Too  much  news  about 
Armenian  massacres  filtered  through;  there 
should  not  now  be  such  leakage.  And  when 
starvation  and  pestilence  had  firmly  established 
themselves,  Jemal  the  Great  went  down  to  see 
what  his  personal  exertions  could  effect.  All 
was  working  in  accordance  with  his  plan;  the 
poorer  classes  of  Arabs  were  dying  like  flies, 
but  mortality  was  not  so  successful  among  the 
wealthier,  who  could,  to  some  extent,  purchase 
food.  So  Jemal  the  Great  set  to  work  among 
them.  He  began  by  hanging  the  heads  of 
Syrian  Arabs  in  Damascus,  Beirut,  and  other 
cities.  No  semblance  of  trial,  no  prosecution  or 
arraignment,  w^ere  necessary:  he  established 
courts-martial  under  military  control,  made  lists 
of  the  accused,  and  ordered  the  courts-martial 
to  condemn  them  to  death.  Sometimes  he  made 
mistakes,  appointing  as  the  members  of  his 
court-martial  men  who  were  not  such  sturdy 
patriots  as  he,  and  refused  to  sentence  for  no 
crime  the  accused  whom  he  nominated.    He  rem- 


126        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

edied  such  mistakes  by  appointing  new  boards 
of  more  seasoned  stuff.  Moslem  and  Christian 
alike  were  brought  before  them,  and  a  general 
accusation  of  pro-French  tendencies  seems  to 
have  been  sufficient  to  secure  a  sentence  of  death 
or  lifelong  imprisonment.  He  aimed  not  at  the 
poor  and  the  obscure,  for  whom  hunger  and 
pestilence  were  providing,  but  at  the  rich  and 
the  influential.  The  higher  clergy  in  Christian 
circles,  Bishops  and  Monsignors,  were  a  fa- 
vourite target,  and  among  Moslems  influential 
Sheikhs.  Sometimes  there  was  a  parody  of  a 
trial ;  sometimes  the  parody  was  dispensed  with, 
and  when  the  black  curtain  was  last  raised  over 
Syria,  Jemal  the  Great  had  disposed  of  over 
eight  hundred  of  the  heads  of  the  most  influen- 
tial of  Syrian  Arabs.  He  had  got  rid,  in  fact, 
of  the  whole  House  of  Lords,  and  something 
more.  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  "feudal 
values ' '  among  the  Arabs  will  understand  what 
that  means.  He  decapitated,  not  individuals 
only,  but  groups.  For  devilish  ingenuity  in  this 
combination  of  starvation  and  pestilence  for  the 
poor,  and  death  or  lifelong  imprisonment  for 
the  chiefs,  Jemal  the  Great  must  take  rank  with 
Abdul  Hamid  and  the  contrivers  of  the  Ar- 
menian massacres.  He  cannot,  it  is  true,  owing 
to  lack  of  troops,  obtain  the  swift  results  of 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  127 

Enver  in  Armenia,  but  between  typhus,  starva- 
tion, and  courts-martial,  his  solution  of  the  Arab 
question  in  Syria  is  making  steady  progress. 
And  those  measures,  hideously  efficient  in  them- 
selves, are,  beyond  any  doubt  whatever,  only 
the  precursors  of  more  sweeping  exterminations 
of  the  Arab  race,  which  will  be  effected  after, 
the  war,  if  the  Allied  Powers  do  not  step  in  to 
save  it.  The  Faithful  of  the  Holy  City,  Mecca, 
have  revolted  and  thrown  off  the  Turkish  yoke, 
and  while  the  war  lasts,  and  Turkish  troops  are 
otherwise  occupied  under  Teutonic  supervision, 
they  will  be  able  to  maintain  their  independence, 
for  there  is  no  considerable  body  of  Turks  which 
can  seriously  threaten  them.  But  the  Syrian 
Arabs,  so  long  as  the  war  lasts,  are  being,  and 
will  be,  the  victims  of  a  quiet  scheme  of  ex- 
termination, which,  if  long  continued,  will  be  as 
complete  as  that  devised  and  carried  out  by  the 
butchers  of  Constantinople  for  the  peoples  of 
Armenia.  It  is  not  in  the  interest  of  the  Ger- 
mans to  save  them,  and  no  check  is  being  put 
on  Jemal  the  Great  to  hinder  him  from  assist- 
ing starvation  and  typhus  to  ravage  the  coun- 
try, and  supplementing  their  deadly  work  by 
court-martial  without  trial. 

Equally  significant  of  the  rage  for  the  de- 
struction of  Arabs  was  the  treatment  of  the 


128        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Bagdad  Arab  army  corps.  In  spite  of  the  need 
for  troops  one  half  of  it  was  sent  from  Bagdad 
to  Erzerum  in  the  depth  of  winter,  without  any 
provision  of  warm  clothing.  There,  in  those 
cold  uplands,  the  men  died  at  the  rate  of  fifty 
to  sixty  a  day.  Their  commanding  officer  was 
a  Turk,  and  a  creature  of  Enver's,  called  Abdul 
Kader.  Though  these  troops  had  fought  ad- 
mirably, he  openly  called  them  Arab  traitors, 
and  his  orders  seem  to  have  been  merely  to  get 
rid  of  them.  There  were  no  courts-martial; 
they  were  just  taken  into  a  climate  which  killed 
them. 

While  for  the  last  thirty  years  the  Armenians 
and  Syrians  have  emigrated  in  large  numbers 
from  the  Ottoman  Empire,  there  has  been  a 
large  immigration  of  Jews  into  it.  This  move- 
ment was  originally  due  to  the  persecution  they 
suffered  in  Russia.  Germany  and  Austria  were 
closed  to  them,  and,  flying  from  the  hideous 
pogroms  that  threatened  them  with  extermina- 
tion, they  began  to  settle  in  Palestine.  Wealthy 
compatriots  such  as  Baron  Edmond  de  Roths- 
child assisted  them,  and,  with  the  amazing  ver- 
satility of  their  race,  they,  trades-people  and 
town-folk,  adapted  themselves  to  new  condi- 
tions, turned  their  wits  towards  husbandry  and 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  129 

agriculture,  and  during  the  last  thirty  years 
have  flourished  and  multiplied  in  a  manner  quite 
unrealised  by  the  western  world.  In  1881  there 
were  not  more  than  25,000  of  them  in  the  home 
of  their  race,  but  by  the  beginning  of  the  Euro- 
pean War,  when  their  immigration  ceased  for 
the  present,  they  numbered  120,000  souls.  Till 
then  the  Ottoman  Government  adopted  the  an- 
cient Turkish  policy  of  neglect  towards  them, 
for  they  were  not  powerful  enough  numerically 
to  earn  the  honour  of  a  massacre,  and,  in  addi- 
tion, they  were  useful  settlers.  Backed  by 
powerful  Western  influence,  French,  English, 
and  German  alike,  they  improved  out  of  knowl- 
edge the  values  of  the  lands  where  they  estab- 
lished themselves,  and  by  intelligent  manage- 
ment, by  conserving  and  increasing  the  water 
supply  with  irrigation  and  well-digging,  they 
have  brought  many  thousand  acres  into  cultiva- 
tion. Originally  refugees,  fleeing  from  out- 
rageous persecutions,  their  immigration  by  de- 
grees took  on  a  different  spirit.  Not  only  were 
they  coming  out  of  captivity,  but  they  were 
entering  into  the  ancient  Land  of  Promise 
again.  Zionism,  the  spirit  of  the  returning 
exiles,  animated  them,  and,  according  to  their 
prophets,  they  realised  that  "The  Lord  shall 
comfort  Zion,  He  shall  comfort  all  her  waste 


130        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

places."  They  had  sowed  in  tears;  now,  on 
their  return,  they  were  reaping  in  joy,  and, 
though  their  land  was  still  under  the  infidel 
yoke,  they  were  allowed  to  dwell  in  peace,  busy, 
industrious,  with  the  halo  of  home-coming  in 
their  hearts.  They  paid,  of  course,  their  Turk- 
ish taxes,  but  these  were  not  levied  in  any  op- 
pressive manner,  and  their  colonies  were  thrifty, 
self-governing  and  prosperous.  Already  before 
the  war,  one-tenth  of  the  cultivated  land  in 
Palestine  was  in  their  hands,  they  had  their  own 
schools,  their  own  methods  of  organisation,  and, 
more  significant  than  all,  Hebrew  became  a  liv- 
ing language  again.  Germany,  intent  on  her 
penetration  of  Turkey,  made  an  attempt  to  Ger- 
manise them  also  (for  Germany,  as  we  shall 
see,  has  a  very  special  interest  in  these  Jewish 
colonies),  shook  her  head  over  Zionism,  for 
which  she  tried  to  substitute  Prussianism,  and 
wanted  to  make  the  German  language  compul- 
sory in  Jewish  schools  at  Haifa  and  Jaffa,  but 
her  effort  completely  failed.  Nothing  could 
show  the  inherent  vitality  of  this  Jewish  colon- 
isation more  strikingly. 

These  Jewish  settlers  then  were  left  in  peace ; 
from  minuteness  they  escaped  the  notice  of  the 
Young  Turk  party  in  its  schemes  for  the  com- 
plete Ottomanisation  of  the  Empire,  and,  until 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  131 

the  present  year  1917,  no  mention  of  * '  the  Jew- 
ish question"  was  propounded.  But  it  will  be 
remembered  that  in  1915,  certain  Jewish  refu- 
gees, taking  warning  from  the  Armenian  mas- 
sacres, fled  to  Egypt,  and  there  founded  a  Zion- 
ist mule-corps,  which  served  under  the  English 
in  the  Gallipoli  campaign.  It  seems  very  prob- 
able that  it  was  this  that  directed  the  attention 
of  Jemal  the  Great  to  the  Jewish  colonies  in 
Palestine :  possibly  it  was  merely  that  he  was  a 
more  thorough  Ottomaniser  than  his  colleagues 
in  Constantinople.  In  any  case  he  ordered  the 
''deportation"  of  all  Jews  from  Jaffa,  Gaza, 
and  other  agTicultural  districts.  All  Jews  were 
commanded  to  leave  Jaffa  within  forty-eight 
hours,  no  means  of  transport  was  given  them, 
and  they  were  forbidden  to  take  with  them 
either  provisions  or  any  of  their  belongings. 
Eight  thousand  Jews  were  evicted  from  Jaffa 
alone,  and  their  houses  were  pillaged,  and  they 
robbed,  maltreated,  and  many  were  murdered. 
Thus,  and  in  no  other  way  had  the  massacres  of 
the  Armenians  begun,  and,  that  there  should  be 
no  mistake  about  it,  Jemal  threatened  them  ex- 
plicitly with  the  fate  of  the  Armenians.  Next 
day  Ludd  was  evacuated  also ;  the  evacuation  of 
Haifa  and  Jerusalem  was  threatened,  and  artil- 
lery was  sent  to  Jerusalem.    There  can  be  no 


132        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

doubt  in  fact  that  Jemal  planned  and  began  to 
carry  out  a  massacre  of  all  Jews. 

At  that  point  the  Germans  intervened,  and 
for  the  present  (but  only  for  the  present,  for  so 
long  in  fact  as  Germany  has  complete  control 
over  all  Turkish  internal  affairs,  in  which  she 
protested  she  could  not  meddle)  the  Jewish  col- 
onies in  Palestine  seem  to  be  safe.^  The  Ger- 
man chief  of  the  General  Staff  telegraphed  to 
Berlin  that  the  ''military  considerations"  on 
which  Jemal  based  his  deportations  did  not 
exist,  and  Herr  Cohn  in  the  Reichstag  drew  the 
Imperial  Chancellor's  attention  to  this.  How 
seriously  the  menace  was  regarded  in  Germany, 
and  how  far  the  deportations  had  gone  may  be 
gathered  from  his  words,  "Is  the  Imperial 
Chancellor  prepared  to  influence  the  Turkish 
Government  in  such  a  manner  as  to  prevent 
with  certainty — so  far  as  this  is  still  possible — 
a  repetition  in  Palestine  of  the  Armenian  atroci- 
ties?" This  was  sufficient:  Germany,  who 
could  not  dream  of  interfering  in  Turkish  in- 
ternal affairs  when  only  the  massacre  of  hun- 
dreds  of   thousands   of   Armenians   was   con- 

*  This  view  seems  to  be  borne  out  by  subsequent  events,  for 
the  Jews  evacuated  from  Jaffa  have  been  permitted  to  return 
owing  to  the  intervention  of  the  Spanish  Government.  It  is  not 
hard  to  guess  who  prompted  that. 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  133 

cemed,  sent  her  order,  and,  for  the  present, 
Jemal  the  Great  has  been  unable  to  proceed 
with  the  solution  of  the  Jewish  question  in  Tur- 
key, which  he  had  just  discovered.  We  need 
not  yet  in  fact  give  Jemal  his  Jew.  But  some 
sort  of  explanation  to  soothe  the  exasperation 
of  the  Turks  in  not  being  allowed  to  murder 
when  and  how  and  where  they  pleased,  was 
thought  advisable,  and  the  explanation  (an  ex- 
traordinarily significant  one)  was  given  in  an 
inspired  paragraph  of  the  Frankfurter  Zeitung 
not  long  after.  "The  valuable  structure  of 
Zionist  cultural  work,  in  which  the  German  Em- 
pire must  have  well  founded  interest  in  view  of 
future  and  very  promising  trade  relations,  will, 
it  is  very  much  to  be  hoped,  be  preserved  from 
destruction  so  far  as  purely  military  require- 
ments do  not  make  it  necessary.  Pan-Turkish 
ideals  have  no  sort  of  meaning  in  Palestine 
where  practically  no  Turks  dwell. ' ' 

We  may  take  it,  then,  that  with  regard  to  the 
projected  Jewish  massacres,  quite  clearly  fore- 
shadowed by  the  schemes  of  deportation  from 
Jaffa  and  Gaza,  Germany  has  made  strong  rep- 
resentations to  the  Ottoman  Government.  She 
did  not  do  so  (indeed  she  officially  refused  to 
do  so)  when  the  Armenian  massacres  began,  for 
she  could  not  interfere  in  Turkey's  internal  af- 


134        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

fairs.  But  now  she  has  discovered  that  Pan- 
Turkish  ideals  have  no  sort  of  meaning  in  Pales- 
tine, and  thus,  with  amazing  astuteness,  has 
provided  herself  with  a  reason  for  interfering, 
while  still  not  giving  up  the  policy  of  non- 
interference in  Turkish  affairs,  for  Turkey,  she 
has  discovered,  has  no  affairs  in  Palestine.  At 
the  same  time  she  guards  herself  from  diplo- 
matic defeat  by  the  hope  that  Zionist  cultural 
work  win  be  saved  from  destruction  50  far  as 
purely  military  requirements  do  not  mahe  it 
necessary.  In  other  words,  supposing  Jemal 
the  Great  got  completely  out  of  hand,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  indiscriminate  massacre  of  the  Jews, 
Germany  would  doubtless  accept  his  plea  that 
military  requirements  had  made  it  necessary. 
.  .  .  And  we  were  once  so  ignorant  as  to  assure 
ourselves  that  Germany  had  no  notions  of  diplo- 


macy 


The  full  significance  of  her  intervention  on 
behalf  of  the  Jews,  when  neither  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  Armenians,  the  persecution  of  the 
Arabs,  nor  the  deportation  of  the  Greeks  moved 
Germany  to  any  decided  action  or  energetic  pro- 
test, must  be  left,  in  so  far  as  it  concerns  the 
future,  to  another  chapter.  But  as  regards  the 
present  and  the  past  it  will  be  useful  to  con- 
sider here  what  has  prompted  her  to  make  a 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  135 

protest  (which  we  may  regard,  so  long  as  her 
foot  is  on  the  neck  of  the  Turks,  as  having  been 
successful)  against  these  projected  massacres. 
Certainly  it  was  not  humanity;  it  was  not  the 
faintest  desire  to  save  innocent  people  in  gen- 
eral from  being  murdered  wholesale,  for  in  the 
similar  case  of  the  Armenians,  her  bowels  of 
compassion  were  not  moved.  Or,  possibly,  if 
we  incline  to  lenience,  we  may  say  that  she  was 
sorry  for  the  Armenians,  but  could  not  then 
risk  a  disagreement  with  their  murderers 
who  were  her  allies,  whereas  now,  feeling 
herself  more  completely  dominant  over  the 
Turks  than  she  then  did,  she  could  risk 
being  peremptory,  especially  since  there  was 
that  saving  clause  about  military  require- 
ments. For  during  the  Armenian  massacres, 
the  Dardanelles  expedition  was  still  on  the 
shores  of  Gallipoli,  and  the  menace  to  Con- 
stantinople acute.  It  was  possible  that  if  she 
opposed  a  firm  front  to  the  Armenian  massa- 
cres, the  Turks,  already  on  the  verge  of  despair 
with  regard  to  saving  the  capital  from  capture, 
might  have  made  terms  with  the  Allies.  But 
now  no  such  imminence  of  danger  threatened 
them,  and,  with  Germany's  domination  over 
them  vastly  more  secure  than  it  had  been  in 
1915,  she  could  afford  to  treat  them  less  as  allies 


136        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

and  more  as  a  conquered  people.  This  alone 
might  have  accounted  for  her  unprecedented  im- 
pulse of  humanity  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
still  attribute  such  instincts  to  her,  but  she  had 
far  stronger  reasons  than  that  for  wanting  to 
save  the  Jews  of  Palestine. 

Her  policy  with  regard  to  them  is  set  forth 
in  a  pamphlet  by  Dr.  Davis  Treitsch,  called 
Die  Juden  der  Tilrkei,  pubhshed  in  1915,  which 
is  a  most  illuminating  little  document.  These 
Jewish  colonies,  as  we  have  seen,  came  from 
Russia,  and  as  Germany  realised,  long  before 
the  war,  they  might  easily  form  a  German 
nucleus  in  the  Near  East,  for  they  largely  con- 
sisted of  German-speaking  Jews,  akin  in  lan- 
guage and  blood  to  a  most  important  element 
in  her  own  population.  *'In  a  certain  sense," 
says  Dr.  Treitsch,  ''the  Jews  are  a  Near  East- 
ern element  in  Germany  and  a  German  element 
in  Turkey. ' '  He  goes  on  with  unerring  acumen 
to  lament  the  exodus  of  German-speaking  Jews 
to  the  United  States  and  to  England.  "An- 
nually some  100,000  of  these  are  lost  to  Ger- 
many, the  empire  of  the  English  language  and 
the  economic  system  that  goes  with  it  is  being 
enlarged,  while  a  German  asset  is  being  propor- 
tionately depreciated.  ...  It  will  no  longer  do 
simply  to  close  the  German  frontiers  to  them, 


QUESTION  OF  SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  137 

and  in  view  of  the  difficulties  which  would  re- 
sult from  a  wholesale  migration  of  Jews  into 
Germany  itself,  Germans  will  only  be  too  glad 
to  find  a  way  out  in  the  emigration  of  those  Jews 
to  Turkey — a  solution  extraordinarily  favour- 
able to  the  interests  of  all  three  parties  con-« 
cemed." 

Here,  then,  is  the  matter  in  a  nutshell :  Ger- 
many, wide-awake  as  ever,  saw  long  ago  the 
advantage  to  her  of  a  growing  Jewish  popular 
tion  from  the  Pale  in  Turkey.  She  was  perhaps 
a  little  overloaded  with  them  herself,  but  in  this 
immigration  from  Russia  to  Palestine  she  saw 
the  formation  of  a  colony  that  was  well  worth 
German  protection,  and  the  result  of  the  war, 
provided  the  Palestinian  immigrants  were  left 
in  peace,  would  be  to  augment  very  largely  the 
number  of  those  settling  there.  ' '  Galicia, ' '  says 
Dr.  Treitsch,  "and  the  western  provinces  of 
Eussia,  which  between  them  contain  more  than 
half  the  Jews  in  the  world,  have  suffered  more 
from  the  war  than  any  other  region.  Jewish 
homes  have  been  broken  up  by  hundreds  of 
thousands,  and  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that, 
as  a  result  of  the  war,  there  will  be  an  emigra- 
tion of  East  European  Jews  on  an  unprece- 
dented scale."  This  emigration,  then,  to  Pales- 
tine was,  in  Germany's  view,  a  counterweight  to 


138        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

the  100,000  annually  lost  to  her  through  emigra- 
tion to  America  and  England.  With  her  foot 
on  Turkey's  neck  she  had  control  over  these 
German-speaking  Jews,  and  saw  in  them  the  ele- 
ments of  a  German  colony.  Her  calculations, 
it  is  true,  were  somewhat  upset  by  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Zionist  movement,  by  which  those 
settlers  declared  themselves  to  have  a  national- 
ity of  their  own,  and  a  language  of  their  own, 
and  Dr.  Treitsch  concedes  that.  ''But,"  he 
adds, ' '  in  addition  to  Hebrew,  to  which  they  are 
more  and  more  inclined,  the  Jews  must  have  a 
world-language,  and  this  can  only  be  German. ' ' 
This,  then,  in  brief,  and  only  up  to  the  pres- 
ent, is  the  story  of  how  the  Jewish  massacres 
were  stayed.  The  Jews  were  potential  Ger- 
mans, and  Germany,  who  sat  by  with  folded 
hands  when  Arabs  and  Armenians  were  led  to 
torture  and  death,  put  up  a  warning  JSnger,  and, 
for  the  present,  saved  them.  In  her  whole  con- 
duct of  the  war,  nothing  has  been  more  char- 
acteristic than  her  ''verboten"  to  one  projected 
massacre  and  her  acquiescence  in  others.  But, 
as  for  her  having  saved  the  Jews  out  of  motives 
of  humanity,  ' '  Credant  Judaei ! '  * 


I 


CHAPTER  V 

Deutschiand  iJBER  Allah 

It  was  commonly  said  at  the  beginning  of  this 
war  that,  whatever  Germany's  military  re- 
sources might  be,  she  was  hopelessly  and  child- 
ishly lacking  in  diplomatic  ability  and  in  knowl- 
edge of  psychology,  from  which  all  success  in 
diplomacy  is  distilled.  As  instances  of  this 
grave  defect,  people  adduced  the  fact  that,  ap- 
parently, she  had  not  anticipated  the  entry  of 
Great  Britain  into  the  war  at  all,  while  her 
treatment  of  Belgium  immediately  afterwards 
was  universally  pronounced  to  be  not  a  crime 
merely,  but  a  blunder  of  the  stupidest  sort.  It 
is  perfectly  true  that  Germany  did  not  under- 
stand, and,  as  seems  likely  in  the  light  of  in- 
numerable other  atrocities,  never  will  under- 
stand, the  psychology  of  civilised  peoples;  she 
has  never  shown  any  signs  up  till  now,  at  any 
rate,  of  '^ having  got  the  hang  of  it"  at  all.  But 
critics  of  her  diplomacy  failed  to  see  the  root- 
fact  that  she  did  not  understand  it  merely  be- 
cause it  did  not  interest  her.    It  was  not  worth 

139 


140        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

her  while  to  master  the  psychology  of  other  civ- 
ilised nations,  since  she  was  out  not  to  under- 
stand them,  but  to  conquer  them.  She  had  all 
the  information  she  wanted  about  their  armies 
and  navies  and  guns  and  ammunition  neatly  and 
correctly  tabulated.  Why,  then,  since  this  was 
all  that  concerned  her,  should  she  cram  her  head 
with  irrelevant  information  about  what  they 
might  feel  on  the  subject  of  gas-attacks  or  the 
torpedoing  of  neutral  ships  without  warning! 
As  long  as  her  fumes  were  deadly  and  her  sub- 
marines subtle,  nothing  further  concerned  her. 
But  Europe  generally  made  a  great  mistake 
in  supposing  that  Germany  could  not  learn  psy- 
chology, and  the  process  of  its  distillation  into 
diplomacy  when  it  interested  her.  The  psychol- 
ogy of  the  French  and  English  was  a  useless 
study,  for  she  was  merely  going  to  fight  them, 
but  for  years  she  had  been  studying  with  an 
industry  and  a  patience  that  put  our  diplomacy 
to  shame  (as  was  most  swiftly  and  ignomini- 
ously  proven  when  it  came  into  conflict  with 
hers)  the  psychology  of  the  Turks.  For  years 
she  had  watched  the  dealings  of  the  Great 
Powers  with  Turkey,  but  she  had  never  really 
associated  herself  with  that  policy.  She  sat 
quietly  by  and  saw  how  it  worked.  Briefly  it 
was  this.   For  a  hundred  years  Turkey  had  been 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        141 

kept  alive  in  Europe  by  the  sedulous  attentions 
of  the  Physician  Powers,  who  dared  not  let  him 
die  for  fear  of  the  stupendous  quarrels  which 
would  instantly  arise  over  his  corpse.  So  there 
they  all  sat  round  his  bed,  and  kept  him  alive 
with  injections  of  strychnine  and  oxygen,  and, 
no  less,  by  a  policy  of  rousing  and  irritating  the 
patient.  All  through  the  reign  of  Abdul  Hamid 
they  persevered :  Great  Britain  plucked  his  pil- 
low from  him,  so  to  speak,  by  her  protectorate 
of  Egypt;  Russia  tweaked  Eastern  Rumelia 
from  him ;  France  deprived  him  of  his  hot-water 
bottle  when  she  snatched  at  the  Constantinople 
quays,  and  they  all  shook  and  slapped  him  when 
he  went  to  war  with  Greece  in  1896,  and  in- 
stantly deprived  him  of  the  territory  he  had 
won  in  Thessaly.  That  was  the  principle  of 
European  diplomacy  towards  Turkey,  and  from 
it  Germany  always  held  aloof. 

But  from  about  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of 
the  present  German  Emperor,  German  or  rather 
Prussian  diplomacy  had  been  going  quietly 
about  its  work.  It  was  worth  while  to  study  the 
psychology  of  the  Turks,  because  dimly  then, 
but  with  ever-increasing  distinctness,  Germany 
foresaw  that  Turkey  might  be  a  counter  of  im- 
mense importance  in  the  great  conflict  which 
was  assuredly  drawing  nearer,  though  as  yet  its 


142        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

existence  was  but  foreshadowed  by  the  most  dis- 
tant reflections  of  sununer  lightning  on  a  serene 
horizon.  But  if  Turkey  was  to  be  of  any  profit 
to  her,  she  wanted  a  strong  Turkey  who  could 
fight  with  her  (or  rather  for  her),  and  she  had 
no  use  for  the  Sick  Man  whom  the  other  Powers 
were  bent  on  keeping  alive,  but  no  more.  Her 
own  eventual  domination  of  Turkey  was  always 
the  end  in  view,  but  she  wanted  to  dominate  not 
a  weak  but  a  strong  servant.  And  her  diplo- 
macy was  not  less  than  brilliant  simply  from 
the  fact  that  on  the  one  hand  it  soothed  Turkey 
instead  of  irritating,  and,  on  the  other,  that  it 
went  absolutely  unnoticed  for  a  long  time  No- 
body knew  that  it  was  going  on.  She  sent  offi- 
cers to  train  the  Turkish  army,  well  knowing 
what  magnificent  material  Anatolia  afforded, 
and  she  had  thoroughly  grasped  the  salient  fact 
that  to  make  any  way  with  Oriental  peoples 
your  purse  must  be  open  and  your  backshish 
unlimited.  ' '  There  is  no  God  but  backshish,  and 
the  Deutsche  Bank  is  his  prophet. ' ' 

For  years  this  went  on  very  quietly,  and  all 
over  the  great  field  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  the 
first  tiny  blades  of  the  crop  that  Germany  was 
sowing  began  to  appear.  To-day  that  crop 
waves  high,  and  covers  the  whole  field  with  its 
ripe  and  fruitful  ears.    For  to-day  Turkey  is 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        143 

neither  more  nor  less  than  a  German  colony, 
and  more  than  makes  up  to  her  for  the  colonies 
she  has  lost  and  hopes  to  regain.  She  knows 
that  perfectly  well,  and  so  do  any  who  have  at 
all  studied  the  history  and  the  results  of  her 
diplomacy  there.  Even  Turkey  itself  must,  as 
in  an  uneasy  dream,  be  faintly  conscious  of  it. 
For  who  to-day  is  the  Sultan  of  Turkey?  No 
other  than  William  ii.  of  Germany.  It  is  in 
Berlin  that  his  Cabinet  meets,  and  sometimes  he 
asks  Talaat  Bey  to  attend  in  a  strictly  honorary 
capacity.  And  Talaat  Bey  goes  back  to  Con- 
stantinople with  a  strictly  honorary  sword  of 
honour.  Or  else  he  gives  one  to  William  ii. 
from  his  soi-disant  master,  the  Sultan,  or  takes 
one  back  to  his  soi-disant  master  from  his  real 
master.  For  no  one  knows  better  than  William 
II.  the  use  that  swords  of  honour  play  in  deeds 
of  dishonour. 

The  object  of  this  chapter  is  to  trace  and 
mount  the  hewn  and  solid  staircase  of  steps  by 
which  Germany's  present  supremacy  over  Tur- 
key was  achieved. 

Apart  from  the  quiet  spade-work  that  had 
been  going  on  for  some  years,  Germany  made 
no  important  move  till  the  moment  when,  in 
1909,  the  Young  Turk  party,  after  the  forced 
abdication  of  Abdul  Hamid,  proclaimed  the  aims 


144        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

and  ideals  of  the  new  regime.  At  once  Ger- 
many saw  her  opportunity,  for  here,  with  her 
help,  might  arise  the  strong  Turkey  which  she 
desired  to  see,  instead  of  the  weak  Turkey  which 
all  the  other  European  Powers  had  been  keep- 
ing on  a  lowering  diet  for  so  long  (desirous  only 
that  it  should  not  quite  expire),  and  from  that 
moment  she  began  to  lend,  or  rather  let,  to 
Turkey,  in  ever-increasing  quantities,  the  re- 
sources of  her  scientific  and  her  military  knowl- 
edge. It  was  in  her  interests,  if  Turkey  was  to 
be  of  use  to  her,  that  she  should  educate,  and 
irrigate,  and  develop  the  unexploited  treasures 
of  human  material,  of  fertility  and  mineral 
wealth;  and  Germany's  gold,  her  schools,  her 
laboratories  were  at  Turkey's  disposal.  But  in 
every  case  she,  as  in  duty  bound  to  her  people, 
saw  that  she  got  very  good  value  for  her  out- 
lay. 

Here,  then,  was  the  great  psychological  mo- 
ment when  Germany  instantly  moved.  The 
Young  Turks  proclaimed  that  they  were  going 
to  weld  the  Ottoman  Empire  into  one  homo- 
geneous and  harmonious  whole,  and  by  a  piece 
of  brilliant  paradoxical  reasoning  Germany  de- 
termined that  it  was  she  who  was  going  to  do  it 
for  them.  In  flat  contradiction  of  the  spirit  of 
their  manifestoes,  which  proclaimed  the  Pan- 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        145 

Turkish  ideal,  she  conceived  and  began  to  carry- 
out  under  their  very  noses  the  great  new  chap- 
ter of  the  Pan-Germanic  ideal.  And  the  Young 
Turks  did  not  know  the  difference !  They  mis- 
took that  lusty  Teutonic  changeling  for  their 
own  new-bom  Turkish  babe,  and  they  nursed 
and  nourished  it.  Amazingly  it  throve,  and  soon 
it  cut  its  teeth,  and  one  day,  when  they  thought 
it  was  asleep,  it  arose  from  its  cradle  a  baby  no 
more,  but  a  great  Prussian  guardsman  who 
shouted,  ' ' Deutschland  tiber  Allah!" 

Only  once  was  there  a  check  in  the  growth  of 
the  Prussian  infant,  and  that  was  no  more  than 
a  childish  ailment.  For  when  the  Balkan  wars 
broke  out  the  Turkish  army  was  in  the  transi- 
tional stage.  Its  German  tutors  had  not  yet 
had  time  to  inspire  the  army  with  German  disci- 
pline and  tradition ;  they  had  only  weeded  out, 
so  to  speak,  the  old  Turkish  spirit,  the  blind 
obedience  to  the  Ministers  of  the  Shadow  of 
God.  The  Shadow  of  God,  in  fact,  in  the  person 
of  the  Sultan,  had  been  dragged  out  into  the 
light,  and  his  Shadow  had  grown  appreciably 
less.  In  consequence  there  was  not  at  this  junc- 
ture any  cohesion  in  the  army,  and  it  suffered 
reverse  after  reverse.  But  a  strong  though  a 
curtailed  Turkey  was  more  in  accordance  with 
Prussian  ideas  than  a  weak  and  sprawling  one, 


146        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

and  Germany  bore  the  Turkish  defeats  very  val- 
iantly. And  that  was  the  only  set-back  that 
this  Pan-Prussian  youngster  experienced,  and 
it  was  no  more  than  an  attack  of  German 
measles  which  he  very  quickly  got  over.  For 
two  or  three  years  German  influence  wavered, 
then  recovered,  ''with  blessings  on  the  falling 
out,  that  all  the  more  endears. ' ' 

It  is  interesting  to  see  how  Germany  adapted 
the  Pan-Turkish  ideal  to  her  own  ends,  and,  by 
a  triumphant  vindication  of  Germany's  meth- 
ods, the  best  account  of  this  Pan-Turkish  ideal 
is  to  be  found  in  a  publication  of  1915  by  Tekin 
Alp,  which  was  written  as  German  propaganda 
and  by  Germany  disseminated  broadcast  over 
the  Turkish  Empire.  An  account  of  this  move- 
ment has  already  been  given  in  Chapter  n.,  as 
far  as  the  Turkish  side  of  it  is  concerned,  and 
it  remains  only  to  enumerate  the  German  con- 
tribution to  the  fledging  of  this  new  Turkish 
Phoenix.  The  Turkish  language  and  the  Turk- 
ish Allah,  God  of  Love,  in  whose  name  the  Ar- 
menians were  tortured  and  massacred,  were  the 
two  wings  on  which  it  was  to  soar.  Auxiliary 
soaring  societies  were  organised,  among  them 
a  Turkish  Ojagha  with  similar  aims,  and  no 
fewer  than  sixteen  branches  of  it  were  founded 
throughout  the  Empire.     There  were  also  a 


DEUTSCHLAND  USER  ALLAH        147 

Turkish  Guiji  or  gymnastic  club,  and  an  Izji  or 
boy  scouts '  club.  A  union  of  merchants  worked 
for  the  same  object  in  districts  where  hitherto 
trade  had  been  in  the  hands  of  Greeks  and  Ar- 
menians, and  signs  appeared  on  their  shops  that 
only  Turkish  labour  was  employed.  Religious 
funds  also  were  used  for  similar  economic 
restoration. 

Germany  saw,  Germany  tabulated,  Germany 
licked  her  lips  and  took  out  her  long  spoon,  for 
her  hour  was  come.  She  did  not  interfere :  she 
only  helped  to  further  the  Pan-Turkish  ideal. 
"With  her  usual  foresight  she  perceived  that  the 
Izji,  for  instance,  was  a  thing  to  encourage,  for 
the  boys  who  were  being  trained  now  would  in 
a  few  years  be  precisely  the  young  men  of  whom 
she  could  not  have  too  many.  By  all  means  the 
boy  scout  movement  was  to  be  encouraged.  She 
encouraged  it  so  generously  and  methodically 
that  in  1916,  according  to  an  absolutely  reliable 
source  of  information,  we  find  that  the  whole 
boy  scout  movement,  with  its  innumerable 
branches,  was  under  the  control  of  a  German 
officer.  Colonel  von  Hoff.  In  its  classes  (der- 
neks)  boys  are  trained  in  military  practices,  in 
''a  recreational  manner,"  so  that  they  enjoy — 
positively  enjoy  (a  Prussian  touch) — the  exer- 
cises that  will  fit  them  to  be  of  use  to  the  Sultan 


148        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

William  ii.  They  learn  trigger-drill,  they  learn 
skirmishing,  they  are  taught  to  make  reports  on 
the  movements  of  their  companies,  they  are 
shown  neat  ways  of  judging  distances.  They 
are  divided  into  two  classes,  the  junior  class 
ranging  from  the  ages  of  twelve  to  seventeen, 
the  senior  class  consisting  of  boys  over  seven- 
teen, but  not  yet  of  military  age.  But  since 
Colonel  von  Hoff  organised  this,  the  military 
age  has  been  extended,  and  boys  of  seventeen 
have  got  to  serve  their  country  on  German 
fronts.  Prussian  thoroughness,  therefore,  saw 
that  their  training  must  begin  earlier;  the  old 
junior  class  has  become  the  senior  class,  and  a 
new  junior  class  has  been  set  on  foot  which 
begins  its  recreational  exercises  in  the  service 
of  William  ii.,  Gott  and  Allah,  at  the  age  of 
eight.  It  is  all  great  fun,  but  those  pigeon- 
livered  little  boys  who  are  not  diverted  by  it 
have  to  go  on  with  their  fun  all  the  same,  for, 
needless  to  say,  the  Izji  is  compulsory  on  all 
boys.  Of  course  they  wear  a  uniform  which  is 
made  in  Germany  and  is  of  a  *' semi-military'* 
character. 

The  provision  of  soldiers  and  sailors,  then, 
trained  from  the  early  age  of  eight,  was  the  first 
object  of  Germany's  peaceful  and  benign  pene- 
tration.   As  from  the  Pisgah  height  of  the  Pan- 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        149 

Turkisli  ideal  she  saw  the  promised  land,  but 
she  had  no  idea  of  seeing  it  only,  like  Moses, 
and  expiring  without  entering  it,  and  her  faith 
that  she  would  enter  it  and  possess  it  and  or- 
ganise it  has  been  wonderfully  justified.  She 
has  not  only  penetrated,  but  has  dominated;  a 
year  ago  towns  like  Aleppo  were  crammed  with 
German  officers,  while  at  Islahie  there  were  sep- 
arate wooden  barracks  for  the  exclusive  use  of 
German  troops.  There  is  a  military  mission 
at  Mamoura,  where  all  the  buildings  are  per- 
manent erections  solidly  built  of  stone,  for  no 
merely  temporary  occupation  is  intended,  and 
thousands  of  freight-cars  with  Belgian  marks 
upon  them  throng  the  railways,  and  on  some  is 
the  significant  German  title  of  ' '  Military  Head- 
quarters of  the  Imperial  Staff."  There  are 
troops  in  the  Turkish  army,  to  which  is  given 
the  title  of  *' Pasha  formation,"  in  compliment 
to  Turkey,  but  the  Pasha  formations  are  under 
command  of  Baron  Kress  von  Kressenstein,  and 
are  salted  with  German  officers,  N.CO.'s,  and 
privates,  who,  although  in  the  Turkish  army, 
retain  their  German  uniforms. 

This  German  leaven  forms  an  instructional 
class  for  the  remainder  of  the  troops  in  these 
formations,  who  are  Turkish.  The  Germans  are 
urged  to  respect  Moslem  customs  and  to  show 


150        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

particular  consideration  for  their  religious  ob- 
servances. Every  German  contingent  arriving 
at  Constantinople  to  join  the  Pasha  formations 
finds  quarters  prepared  on  a  ship,  and  when 
the  troops  leave  for  their  "destination"  they 
take  supplies  from  depots  at  the  railway  sta- 
tion which  will  last  them  two  or  three  months. 
They  are  enjoined  to  write  war  diaries,  and  are 
provided  with  handbooks  on  the  military  and 
geographical  conditions  in  Mesopotamia,  with 
maps,  and  with  notes  on  the  training  and  man- 
agement of  camels.  This  looks  as  if  they  were 
intended  for  use  against  the  English  troops  in 
Mesopotamia,  but  I  cannot  find  that  they  have 
been  identified  there.  The  greatest  secrecy  is 
observed  with  regard  to  those  Pasha  forma- 
tions, and  their  constitution  and  movement? 
are  kept  extremely  well  veiled. 

Wireless  stations  have  been  set  up  in  Asia 
Minor  and  Palestine,  and  these  are  under  the 
command  of  Major  Schlee.  A  Turkish  air-serv- 
ice was  instituted,  at  the  head  of  which  was 
Major  Serno,  a  Prussian  officer,  and  Turkish 
aviators  are  now  in  training  at  Ostend,  where 
they  will  very  usefully  defend  their  native  coun- 
try. At  Constantinople  there  is  a  naval  school 
for  Turkish  engineers  and  mechanics  in  the 
arsenal,  to  help  on  the  Pan-Turkish  ideal,  and 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        161 

with  a  view  to  that  all  the  instructors  are  Ger- 
man :  a  floating  dock  is  in  construction  at  Ismid, 
and  the  order  has  been  placed  with  German 
firms.  It  will  be  capable  of  accommodating 
ships  of  Dreadnought  build,  which  is  a  new  de- 
parture for  the  strictly  Pan-Turkish  ideal.  The 
cost  is  £740,000,  to  be  repaid  three  years  after 
the  end  of  the  war.  Similarly,  by  the  spring 
of  this  year,  Germany  had  arranged  to  start 
submarine  training  in  Constantinople  for  the 
Turks,  and  a  submarine  school  was  open  and 
at  work  in  March.  A  few  months  later  it  was 
established  at  the  island  of  Prinkipo,  where  it 
is  now  hard  at  work  under  German  instructors. 
Other  naval  cadets  were  sent  to  Germany  for 
their  training,  and  Turkish  officers  were  pres- 
ent at  the  battle  of  Jutland  in  June  1916,  and 
of  course  were  decorated  by  the  Emperor  in 
person  for  their  coolness  and  courage.^ 

A  complete  revision  of  the  Turkish  system 
of  exemptions  from  military  service  was  neces- 
sary as  soon  as  Germany  began  to  want  men 
badly.  The  age  for  military  service  was  first 
raised,  and  we  find  a  Turkish  order  of  October 

*  In  October  1917  a  bill  was  passed  for  the  entire  remodelling 
of  the  Turkish  fleet  after  the  war,  ou  the  lines  of  the  German 
fleet,  ' '  which  proved  its  perfect  training  in  the  battle  of  Skager 
Bak." 


152        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

1916,  calling  on  all  men  of  forty-three,  forty- 
four,  and  forty-five  years  of  age  to  pay  their  ex- 
emption tax  if  they  did  not  wish  to  be  called 
to  the  colours.  That  secured  their  money,  and, 
with  truly  Prussian  irony,  hardly  had  this  been 
done  when  a  fresh  army  order  was  issued  calling 
out  all  men,  whether  they  had  paid  their  ex- 
emption tax  or  not.  Germany  thus  secured  both 
their  money  and  their  lives. 

Still  more  men  were  needed,  and  in  November 
a  fresh  levy  of  boys  was  raised  regardless  of 
whether  they  had  reached  the  military  age  or 
not.  This  absorbed  the  senior  class  of  the  boy 
scouts,  who  hitherto  had  learned  their  drill  in 
a  ' ' recreationary  manner."  Neither  Jews  nor 
Christians  are  exempt  from  service,  and  fre- 
quent pressgangs  go  round  Constantinople 
rounding  up  those  who  are  in  hiding. 

Again  the  Prussian  Moloch  was  hungry  for 
more,  and  in  December  1916  the  Turkish  Gazette 
announced  that  all  males  in  Asia  Minor  between 
the  ages  of  fourteen  and  sixty-five  were  to  be 
enrolled  for  military  service,  and  in  January 
of  this  year,  1917,  fresh  recruiting  was  fore- 
shadowed by  the  order  that  men  of  forty-six  to 
fifty-two,  who  had  paid  their  exemption  money, 
should  be  medically  examined  to  see  if  they 
were  fit  for  active  service.    This  fresh  recruit- 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        153 

ing  was  also  put  in  force  in  the  case  of  boys, 
and  during  the  summer  of  1917  all  boys  above 
the  age  of  twelve,  provided  they  were  sound  and 
well-built,  were  taken  for  the  army.  Wider  and 
wider  the  net  was  spread,  and  in  the  same  month 
a  fresh  Turco-German  convention  was  signed, 
whereby  was  enforced  a  reciprocal  surrender 
in  both  countries  of  persons  liable  to  military 
service,  and  of  deserters,  and  simultaneously  all 
Turks  living  in  Switzerland,  and  who  had  paid 
exemption  money,  were  recalled  to  their  Ger- 
manised fatherland.  By  now  the  first  crops  of 
the  year  were  ripening  in  Smyrna,  and  in  de- 
fault of  civilian  labour  (for  every  one  was  now 
a  soldier)  they  were  reaped  by  Turkish  soldiers 
and  the  produce  sent  direct  to  Germany. 

Already  in  August  1916,  certificates  of  Otto- 
man nationality  had  been  granted  to  Serbians 
resident  in  the  Empire  who  were  willing  to  be- 
come Ottoman  subjects,  and  their  *' willingness  " 
was  intensified  by  hints  that  incidents  akin  to 
the  Armenian  massacres  might  possibly  occur 
among  other  alien  peoples.  They  had  to  sign 
a  declaration  that  they  would  not  revert  to 
their  former  nationality,  and  thus,  no  doubt, 
many  Serbs  passed  into  the  Turkish  army.  Fur- 
ther enrolments  were  desirable,  and,  in  March 
1917,  all  Greeks  living  in  Anatolia  were  forcibly 


154        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

proselytised,  their  property  was  confiscated,  and 
they  were  made  liable  to  military  service.  Un- 
fortunately all  were  not  available,  for  of  those 
who  were  removed  from  the  villages  where  they 
lived  to  military  centres,  ten  per  cent,  died  on 
the  forced  marches  from  hunger  and  exposure. 
That  was  annoying  for  the  German  recruiting 
agents,  but  it  suited  well  enough  the  Pan-Turk- 
ish ideal  of  exterminating  foreign  nationalities. 
When  trouble  or  discontent  occurred  among  the 
troops,  it  was  firmly  dealt  with,  as,  for  instance, 
when,  in  November  1916,  there  were  consider- 
able desertions  from  the  49th  Division.  On  that 
occasion  the  order  was  given  to  fire  on  them,  and 
many  were  killed  and  wounded.  The  officer  who 
gave  the  order  was  commended  by  the  Prussian 
authorities  for  his  firmness.  Should  such  an  in- 
cident occur  again,  it  will  no  doubt  be  dealt  with 
no  less  firmness,  for,  in  April  1917,  Macken- 
sen  was  put  in  supreme  command  of  all  troops 
in  Asia  Minor.  But  in  spite  of  this  desertions 
have  largely  increased  lately,  and  during  the 
summer  deserters  out  of  all  the  Turkish  armies 
were  believed  to  number  about  200,000.  Many 
of  those  have  formed  themselves  into  brigand 
bands,  who  make  the  roads  dangerous  for  trav- 
ellers. The  exchange  of  honours  goes  on,  for 
not  long  ago,  in  Berlin,  Prince  Zia-ed-Din,  the 


J 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        155 

Turkish  Sultan's  heir,  presented  a  sword  of 
honour  to  the  Sultan  William  ii.  Probably  he 
gave  him  good  news  of  the  progress  of  the  Ger- 
man harbour  works  begun  in  the  winter  at  Stam- 
boul,  and  himself  learned  that  the  railway 
bridge  which  the  Turks  proposed  to  build  over 
the  Bosporus  was  not  to  be  proceeded  with,  for 
the  German  high  command  had  superseded  that 
scheme  by  their  own  idea  of  making  a  tunnel 
under  the  Bosporus  instead,  which  would  be 
safer  from  aircraft. 

Such  up-to-date,  though  in  brief  outline,  is 
the  history  of  the  establishment  of  the  Prus- 
sian octopus  grip  on  military  and  naval  matters 
in  Turkey.  We  have  largely  ourselves  to  blame 
for  it.  Upon  that  pathetic  and  lamb-like  record 
of  our  diplomacy  during  the  months  between 
the  outbreak  of  the  European  War,  and  the 
entry  of  Turkey  into  it  in  October  1914,  it  would 
be  morbid  to  dwell  at  any  length,  though  a  short 
summary  is  necessary.  As  we  all  know  now, 
Turkey  had  concluded  a  treaty  with  Germany 
early  in  August,  and  when  our  Ambassador  in 
Constantinople,  Sir  Louis  Malet,  who  was  on 
leave  in  England  at  that  date,  returned  to  his 
post  on  August  16th,  all  that  Turkey  wanted  was 
to  gain  time  in  which  to  effect  her  mobilisation. 
This  she  did,  with  complete  success,  and  our 


156        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Ambassador  telegraphed  to  England  stating  his 
perfect  confidence  in  the  sincerity  with  which 
the  Grand  Vizier  professed  his  friendship  for 
England.  All  through  those  weeks  of  August 
and  September  this  confidence  appeared  to  con- 
tinue unabated.  The  Moderate  party  in  Tur- 
key— that  is  to  say,  the  hoodwinking  party — 
were  reported  to  be  daily  gaining  strength,  and 
it  was  most  important  that  the  Allies  should 
give  them  every  assistance,  and  above  all  not 
precipitate  matters.  All  was  going  well :  all  we 
had  to  do  was  to  wait.  So  we  waited,  still 
blindly  confident  in  the  sincerity  of  Turkey's 
friendship  for  England,  while  the  mobilisation 
of  the  Turkish  forces  proceeded  merrily.  By 
the  end  of  September  this  was  nearly  complete, 
and  quite  suddenly  the  Ambassador  informed 
the  Foreign  Office  that  Turkey  appeared  to  be 
temporising.  That  was  perfectly  true,  but  the 
period  of  temporisation  was  nearly  over,  and 
by  mid-October  Turkey  had  something  like 
800,000  men  under  arms,  and  for  nine  weeks 
Enver  Pasha  had  had  his  signed  treaty  with 
Germany  in  his  pocket.  Possibly  this  diplo- 
matic procrastination  was  useful  to  us,  for  it 
enabled  us  to  bring  troops  from  India  in  se- 
curity, and  send  others  to  Egypt.  But  without 
doubt  it  was  useful  to  the  Turks,  for  it  enabled 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        157 

them  to  mobilise  their  armies,  and  to  strengthen 
enonnously  the  defences  of  the  Dardanelles. 
Then  came  the  day  when  Germany  and  Turkey 
were  ready,  the  attack  was  made  on  Odessa,  and 
out  of  Constantinople  we  went.  We  climbed 
into  the  railway  carriages  that  took  the  last  rays 
of  English  influence  out  of  the  Ottoman  Empire, 
and  steep  were  the  stairs  in  the  house  of  a 
stranger !  Turks  are  not  much  given  to  laugh- 
ter, but  Enver  Pasha  must  at  least  have  smiled 
on  that  day. 

Already,  of  course,  German  influence  was 
strong  in  the  army,  which  now  was  thoroughly 
trained  in  German  methods,  but  that  army 
might  still  be  called  a  Turkish  army.  Nowa- 
days, by  no  stretch  of  language  can  it  be  called 
Turkish  except  in  so  far  that  all  Turkish  effi- 
cient manhood  is  helplessly  enlisted  in  it,  for 
there  is  no  branch  or  department  of  it  over 
which  the  Prussian  octopus  has  not  thrown  its 
paralysing  tentacles  and  affixed  its  immovable 
suckers.  Army  and  navy  alike,  the  wireless  sta- 
tions, the  submarines,  the  aircraft,  are  all  di- 
rectly controlled  from  Berlin,  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  generalissimo  of  the  forces  is  Macken- 
sen,  who  is  absolutely  the  Hindenburg  of  the 
East.  But  thorough  as  is  the  control  of  Berlin 
over  Constantinople  in  military  and  naval  mat- 


158        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ters,  it  is  not  one  whit  more  thorough  than  her 
control  in  all  other  matters  of  national  life. 
Never  before  has  Germany  Been  very  success- 
ful in  her  colonisation;  but  if  complete  domi- 
nation— the  sucking  of  a  country  till  it  is  a  mere 
rind  of  itself,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  full  to 
bursting  of  Prussian  ichor — may  be  taken  as 
Germany's  equivalent  of  colonisation,  then  in- 
deed we  must  be  forced  to  recognise  her  success. 
And  it  was  all  done  in  the  name  and  for  the  sake 
of  the  Pan-Turkish  ideal.  Even  now  Prussian 
Pecksniffs  like  Herr  Ernst  Marre,  whose  pam- 
phlet, Die  Turken  und  Wir  nach  dem  Kriege, 
was  published  in  1916,  continue  to  insist  that 
Germany  is  nobly  devoting  herself  to  the  well- 
being  of  Turkey.  "In  doing  this,"  he  exclaims 
in  that  illuminating  document,  "we  are  benefit- 
ing Turkey.  .  .  .  This  is  a  war  of  liberation  for 
Turkey,"  though  omitting  to  say  from  whom 
Turkey  is  being  liberated.  Perhaps  the  Ar- 
menians. Occasionally,  it  is  true,  he  forgets 
that,  and  naively  remarks,  "Turkey  is  a  very 
difficult  country  to  govern.  But  after  the  war 
Turkey  will  be  very  important  as  a  transit  coun- 
try." But  then  he  remembers  again  and  says, 
"We  wish  to  give  besides  taking,  and  we  should 
often  like  to  give  more  than  we  can  hope  to 
give."    Let  us  look  into  this,  and  see  the  man- 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        159 

ner  in  which  Germany  expresses  her  yearning 
to  impoverish  herself  for  the  sake  of  Turkey. 

All  this  reorganisation  of  the  Turkish  army 
was  of  course  a  very  expensive  affair,  and  re- 
quired skilful  financing,  and  it  was  necessary 
to  get  the  whole  of  Turkey 's  exchequer  arrange- 
ments into  German  hands.  A  series  of  financial 
regulations  was  promulgated.  The  Finance 
Minister,  during  1916,  was  still  Turkish,  but  the 
official  immediately  under  him  was  a  German. 
He  was  authorised  to  deposit  with  the  Con- 
trollers of  the  Ottoman  National  Debt  German 
Imperial  Bills  of  £T30,000,000,  and  to  issue  Ger- 
man paper  money  to  the  like  amount.  This  ar- 
rangement insures  the  circulation  of  the  Ger- 
man notes,  which  are  redeemable  by  Turkey  in 
gold  two  years  after  the  declaration  of  peace. 
Gold  is  declared  to  be  the  standard  currency, 
and  no  creditor  is  obliged  to  accept  in  payment 
of  a  debt  more  than  300  piastres  in  silver  or  fifty 
in  nickel.  And  since  there  is  no  gold  in  cur- 
rency (for  it  has  been  all  called  in,  and  penalties 
of  death  have  been  authorised  for  hoarders)  it 
follows  that  this  and  other  issues  of  German 
paper  will  filter  right  through  the  Empire.  At 
the  same  time  a  German  expert,  Dr.  Kautz,  was 
appointed  to  start  banks  throughout  Turkey  in 
order  to  free  the  peasants  from  the  Turkish  vil- 


160        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

lage  usurer,  and  in  consequence  enslave  them  to 
the  German  banks.  Similarly  a  German  was 
put  at  the  head  of  the  Ottoman  Agricultural 
Bank.  These  new  branches  worked  very  well, 
but  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  one  such  was 
started  by  the  Deutsche  Bank  at  Bagdad  in  Oc- 
tober 1916,  which  now  has  its  shutters  up.  Be- 
fore this,  as  we  learn  from  the  Oesterreichischer 
Volksmrt  (June  1916),  Germany  had  issued 
other  gold  notes,  in  payment  for  gold  from  Tur- 
key, which  is  retainable  in  Berlin  till  six  months 
after  the  end  of  the  war.  (It  is  reasonable  to 
wonder  whether  it  will  not  be  retained  rather 
longer  than  that.)  These  gold  notes  were  ac- 
cepted willingly  at  first  by  the  public,  but  the 
increase  in  their  number  (by  the  second  issue) 
has  caused  them  to  be  viewed  with  justifiable 
suspicion,  and  the  depreciation  in  them  con- 
tinues. But  the  Turkish  public  has  no  redress 
except  by  hoarding  gold,  which  is  a  penal  of- 
fence. That  these  arrangements  have  not  par- 
ticularly helped  Turkish  credit  may  be  gathered 
from  the  fact  that  the  Turkish  gold  £1,  nomi- 
nally 100  piastres,  was  very  soon  worth  280 
piastres  in  the  German  paper  standard,  and  it 
now  fetches  a  great  deal  more. 

Again,  the  Deutsche  Orientbank  has  made 
many  extensions,  and  is  already  financing  cot- 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        161 

ton  and  wool  trade  for  after  the  war.  The  es- 
tablishment of  this  provoked  much  applause  in 
German  financial  circles,  who  find  it  to  be  an 
instance  of  the  *  *  far-reaching  and  powerful  Ger- 
mano-Austrian  unity,  which  replaces  the  dis- 
union of  Turkish  finance."  This  is  profoundly 
true,  especially  if  we  omit  the  word  "Austrian" 
inserted  for  diplomatic  reasons.  Again  we  find 
Germany  advancing  £3,000,000  of  German  paper 
to  the  Turkish  Government  in  January  1917, 
for  the  payment  of  supplies  they  have  received 
from  Krupp's  works  and  (vaguely)  for  inter- 
est to  the  German  Financial  Minister.  This, 
too,  we  may  conjecture,  is  to  be  redeemed  after 
the  war  in  gold. 

In  March  of  this  year  we  find  in  the  report  of 
the  Ottoman  Bank  a  German  loan  of  £1,000,000 
for  the  purchase  of  agricultural  implements  by 
Turkey,  and  this  is  guaranteed  by  house-taxes. 
In  all  up  to  that  month,  as  was  announced  in 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies  at  Constantinople, 
Germany  had  advanced  to  Turkey  the  sum  of 
£142,000,000,  entirely,  it  would  seem,  in  German 
paper,  to  be  repaid  at  various  dates  in  gold. 
The  grip,  in  fact,  is  a  strangle-hold,  all  for  Tur- 
key's good,  as  no  doubt  will  prove  the  "New 
Conventions"  announced  by  Zimmemiann  in 
May  1917,  to  take  the  place  of  the  abolished 


162        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Capitulations,  * '  which  left  Turkey  at  the  mercy 
of  predatory  Powers  who  looked  for  the  dis- 
ruption of  the  Ottoman  Empire."  Herr  Zim- 
mermann  does  not  look  for  that:  he  looks  for 
its  absorption.    And  sees  it. 

The  industrial  development  of  Turkey  by  this 
benevolent  and  disinterested  Power  has  been 
equally  thorough  and  far-reaching,  though  Ger- 
many here  has  had  a  certain  amount  of  compe- 
tition by  Hungary  to  contend  against,  for  Hun- 
gary considered  that  Germany  was  trespassing 
on  her  sphere  of  interest.  But  she  has  been  able 
to  make  no  appreciable  headway  against  her 
more  acute  partner,  and  her  application  for  a 
monopoly  of  sugar-production  was  not  favour- 
ably received,  for  Germany  already  had  taken 
the  beet  industry  well  in  hand.  In  Asia  Minor 
the  acreage  of  cultivation  early  in  1917  had 
fallen  more  than  50  per  cent,  from  that  under 
crops  before  the  war,  but  owing  to  the  importa- 
tion of  machinery  from  the  Central  Powers, 
backed  up  by  a  compulsory  Agricultural  Service 
Law,  which  has  just  been  passed,  it  is  hoped 
that  the  acreage  will  be  increased  this  year  by 
something  like  30  per  cent.  The  yield  per  acre 
also  will  be  greatly  increased  this  year,  for  Ger- 
many has,  though  needing  artificial  manures 
badly  herself,  sent  large  quantities  into  Turkey, 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        163 

f  I 

where  they  will  be  more  profitably  employed. 
She  has  no  fear  about  securing  the  produce. 
This  augmented  yield  will,  it  is  true,  not  be  ade- 
quate to  supply  the  needs  of  Turkey,  who  for 
the  last  two  years  has  suffered  from  very  acute 
food  shortage,  which  in  certain  districts  has 
amounted  to  famine  and  wholesale  starvation 
of  the  poorer  classes.  But  it  is  unlikely  that 
their  needs  will  be  considered  at  all,  for  Ger- 
many's needs  (she,  the  fairy  godmother  of  the 
Pan-Turk  ideal)  must  obviously  have  the  first 
call  on  such  provisions  as  are  obtainable.  Thus, 
in  the  new  preserved  meat  factory  at  Aidin,  the 
whole  of  the  produce  is  sent  to  Germany.  Thus, 
too,  though  in  February  1917  there  was  a  daily 
shortage  in  Smyrna  of  700  sacks  of  flour,  and 
the  Arab  and  Greek  population  was  starving,  no 
flour  at  all  was  allowed  to  be  imported  into 
Smyrna.  But  simultaneously  Germany  was 
making  huge  purchases  of  fish,  meat,  and  flour 
in  Constantinople  (paid  for  in  German  paper), 
including  100,000  sheep.  Yet  such  was  the  vil- 
lainous selfishness  of  the  famine-stricken  folk  at 
Adrianople  that,  when  the  trains  containing 
these  supplies  were  passing  through,  a  mob  held 
them  up  and  sold  the  contents  to  the  inhabitants. 
That,  however,  was  an  isolated  instance,  and 
in  any  case  a  law  was  passed  in  October  1916, 


164        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

appointing  a  military  commission  to  control  all 
supplies.  It  enacts  that  troops  shall  be  supplied 
first,  and  specially  ordains  that  the  require- 
ments of  German  troops  come  under  this  head. 
(Private  firms  have  been  expressly  prohibited 
from  purchasing  these  augmented  wheat  sup- 
plies, but  special  permission  was  given  in  1915 
to  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  societies  to 
buy.)  A  few  months  later  we  find  that  there 
are  a  hundred  deaths  daily  in  Constantinople 
from  starvation,  and  two  hundred  in  Smyrna, 
where  there  is  a  complete  shortage  of  oil.  But 
oil  is  still  being  sent  to  Germany,  and  during 
1916  five  hundred  reservoirs  of  oil  were  sent 
there,  each  containing  up  to  15,000  kilogrammes. 
Similarly  during  this  summer  the  price  of  fruit 
has  gone  up  in  Smyrna,  for  the  Germans  have 
reopened  certain  factories  for  preserving  it  and 
turning  it  into  jam,  which  is  being  sent  to  Ger- 
many. The  sugar  is  supplied  from  the  new  beet- 
fields  of  Konia.  But  Kultur  must  be  supplied 
first,  else  Kultur  would  grow  lean,  and  the  Turk- 
ish God  of  Love  will  look  after  the  Smymiotes. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  the  blockade  of  Germany 
does  not  produce  the  desired  result  a  little 
quicker,  for  food  is  already  pouring  in  from 
Turkey,  and  when  the  artificial  manures  have 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        165 

produced  their  early  harvest  the  stream  will 
become  a  torrent.* 

But  during  all  these  busy  and  tremendous 
months  of  war  Germany  has  not  only  been  de- 
nuding Turkey  of  her  food  supplies,  for  the 
sake  of  the  Pan-Turkish  ideal;  in  the  same  al- 
truistic spirit  she  has  been  vastly  increasing  the 
productiveness  of  her  new  and  most  important 
colony.  The  great  irrigation  works  at  Konia, 
begun  several  years  ago,  are  in  operation,  and 
the  revenues  of  the  irrigated  villages  have  been 
doubled.  In  fact,  as  the  report  lately  issued 
says,  "a  new  and  fertile  province  has  been 
formed  by  the  aid  of  German  energy  and  knowl- 
edge. ' '  At  Adana  are  similar  irrigation  works, 
financed  by  the  Deutsche  Bank.  Ernst  Marre 
gives  us  a  most  hopeful  survey  of  them,  for 
Adana  was  already  linked  up  with  the  Bagdad 
Eailway  in  October  1916,  which  was  to  be  the 
great  artery  connecting  Germany  with  the  East. 
There  is  some  considerable  shortage  of  labour 
jthere  (owing  in  part  to  the  Armenian  massacres, 
to  which  we  shall  revert  presently),  but  the 
financial  arrangements  are  in  excellent  shape. 
The  whole  of  the  irrigation  works  are  in  Ger- 
man hands,  and  have  been  paid  for  by  Ger- 
man paper;  and  to  get  the  reservoirs,  etc.,  back 

^  The  harvest  has  now  come  in,  and  is  most  abundant. 


166        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

into  her  own  control,  it  has  been  agreed  that 
Turkey,  already  completely  bankrupt,  will  have 
to  pay  not  only  what  has  been  spent,  but  a  hand- 
some sum  in  compensation;  while,  as  regards 
shortage  of  labour,  prisoners  have  been  released 
in  large  numbers  to  work  without  pay.  This  ir- 
rigation scheme  at  Adana  will  increase  the  cot- 
ton yield  by  four  times  the  present  crop,  so  we 
learn  from  the  weekly  Arab  magazine,  El  Alem 
el  Ismali,  which  tells  us  also  of  the  electric- 
power  stations  erected  there. 

The  same  paper  (October  1916)  announces  to 
the  Anatolian  merchants  that  transport  is  now 
easy,  owing  to  the  arrival  of  engines  and  trucks 
from  Germany,  while  Die  Zeit  (February  1917) 
prophesies  a  prosperous  future  for  this  Ger- 
mano-Turkish  cotton  combine.  Hitherto  Tur- 
key has  largely  imported  cotton  from  England ; 
now  Turkey — thanks  to  German  capital  on 
terms  above  stated — ^will,  in  the  process  of  in- 
ternal development  so  unselfishly  devised  for 
her  by  Germany,  grow  cotton  for  herself,  and 
be  kind  enough  to  give  a  preferential  tariff  to 
Germany. 

A  similarly  bright  future  may  be  predicted 
for  the  sugar-beet  industiy  at  Konia,  where  are 
the  irrigation  works  already  referred  to.  Ar- 
tesian wells  have  been  sunk,  and  there  is  the 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        167 

suggestion  to  introduce  Bulgarian  labour  in  de- 
fault of  Turkish.  As  we  have  seen,  Hungary 
attempted  to  obtain  a  monopoly  with  regard  to 
sugar,  but  Germany  has  been  victorious  on  this 
point  (as  on  every  other  where  she  competes 
with  Hungary),  and  has  obtained  the  concession 
for  a  period  of  thirty  years.  She  reaped  the 
first-fruits  this  last  spring  (1917),  when,  on  a 
single  occasion,  350  trucks  laden  with  sugar 
were  despatched  to  Berlin.  A  similar  irrigation 
scheme  is  bringing  into  cultivation  the  Maki- 
schelin  Valley,  near  Aleppo,  and  Herr  Wied  has 
been  appointed  as  expert  for  irrigation  plant  in 
Syria.  There  has  been  considerable  shortage 
of  coal,  but  now  more  is  arriving  from  the  Black 
Sea,  and  the  new  coal-fields  at  Rodosto  will  soon 
be  giving  an  output. 

Indeed,  it  would  be  easier  to  enumerate  the 
industries  and  economical  developments  of 
Turkey  over  which  Germany  has  not  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  got  the  control  than  those  over 
which  she  has.  In  particular  she  has  shown  a 
parental  interest  in  Turkish  educational  ques- 
tions. She  established  last  year,  under  Ger- 
man management,  a  school  for  the  study  of  Ger- 
man in  Constantinople;  she  has  put  under  the 
protection  of  the  German  Government  the  Jew- 
ish institution  at  Haifa  for  technical  education 


168        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

in  Palestine;  from  Sivas  a  mission  of  school- 
masters has  been  sent  to  Germany  for  the  study 
of  German  methods.  Ernst  Marre  surmises 
that  German  will  doubtless  become  compulsory 
even  in  the  Turkish  intermediate  (secondary) 
schools.  In  April  1917,  the  first  stone  of  the 
'* House  of  Friendship"  was  laid  at  Constanti- 
nople, the  object  of  which  institution  is  to  create 
among  Turkish  students  an  interest  in  every- 
thing German,  while  earlier  in  the  year  arrange- 
ments were  made  for  10,000  Turkish  youths  to 
go  to  Germany  to  be  taught  trades.  These  I 
imagine  were  unfit  for  military  service.  With 
regard  to  such  a  scheme  Halil  Haled  Bey  praises 
the  arrangement  for  the  education  of  Turks  in 
Germany.  "When  they  used  to  go  to  France,  he 
tells  us,  **they  lost  their  religion"  (certainly 
Prussian  Gott  is  nearer  akin  to  Turkish  Allah) 
* '  and  returned  home  unpatriotic  and  useless.  In 
Germany  they  will  have  access  to  suitable  re- 
ligious literature"  (Gott!)  ''and  must  adopt  all 
they  see  good  in  German  methods  without  losing 
their  original  characteristics."  Comment  on 
this  script  is  needless.  The  hand  is  the  hand  of 
Halil  Haled  Bey,  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of 
Potsdam.  Occasionally,  but  rarely,  Austrian 
competition  is  seen.  Professor  Schmoller,  in  an 
Austrian  quarterly  review,  shows  jealousy  of 


DEUTSCHLAND  USER  ALLAH        169 

German  influence,  and  we  find,  in  October  1916, 
an  Ottoman- Austrian  college  started  at  Vienna 
for  250  pupils  of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  But  Ger- 
many has  10,000  in  Berlin.  At  Adana  (where 
are  the  German  irrigation  works)  the  German- 
Turkish  Society  has  opened  a  German  school 
of  300,  while,  reciprocally,  courses  in  Turkish 
have  been  organised  at  Berlin  for  the  sake  of 
future  German  colonists.  In  Constantinople  the 
Tanin  announces  a  course  of  lectures  to  be  held 
by  the  Turco-German  Friendship  Society.  Pro- 
fessor von  Marx  discoursed  last  April  on  for- 
eign influence  and  the  development  of  nations, 
with  special  reference  to  Turkey  and  the  par- 
allel case  of  Germany.  A  few  months  later  we 
find  Hilmet  Nazim  Bey,  official  head  of  the  Turk- 
ish press,  proceeding  to  Berlin  to  learn  German 
press  methods.  A  number  of  editors  of  Turkish 
papers  will  follow  him,  and  soon,  no  doubt,  the 
Turkish  press  will  rival  Cologne  and  Frankfort. 
So  much  for  German  education,  but  her  pene- 
trative power  extends  into  every  branch  of  in- 
dustry and  economics.  In  November  1916,  a 
Munich  expert  was  put  in  charge  of  the  College 
of  Forestry, and  an  economic  society  was  started 
in  Constantinople  on  German  lines  with  German 
instructors.  Inoculation  against  small-pox,  ty- 
phoid, and  cholera  was  made  compulsory;  and 


170        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

we  find  that  the  Turkish  Ministers  of  Posts,  of 
Justice,  and  of  Commerce,  figureheads  all  of 
them,  have  Germans  as  their  acting  Ministers. 
In  the  same  year  a  German  was  appointed  as 
expert  for  silkworm  breeding  and  for  the  culti- 
vation of  beet.  Practically  all  the  railways  in 
Asia  Minor  are  pure  German  concerns  by  right 
of  purchase.  Germany  owns  the  Anatolian  rail- 
way concession  (originally  British),  with  right 
to  build  to  Angora  and  Konia ;  the  Bagdad  rail- 
way concession,  with  preferential  rights  over 
minerals ;  they  have  bought  the  Mersina-Adana 
Railway,  with  right  of  linking  up  to  the  Bagdad 
Railway ;  they  have  bought  the  Smyrna-Cassaba 
Railway,  built  with  French  capital.  They  have 
secured  also  the  Haidar  Pasha  Harbour  con- 
cession, thereby  controlling  and  handling  all 
merchandise  arriving  at  railhead  from  the  in- 
terior of  Asia  Minor.i  Already  on  the  Bagdad 
Railway  the  big  tunnels  of  Taurus  and  Amanus 

*  The  balance-sheets  for  1916  of  certain  of  those  railways  in 
which  the  Deutsche  Bank  has  an  interest  have  come  to  hand. 
They  show  a  very  disagreeable  degree  of  prosperity.  The 
Anatolia  Railway  Company  has  large  profits  with  a  gross  rev- 
enue of  25,737,995  marks.  The  profit  on  the  Haidar-Pasha- 
Angora  Line  has  risen  from  42,566  francs  per  kilometre  to 
45,552.  The  Mersina-Tarsus-Adana  Railway  has  paid  6  per 
cent,  on  its  preference  shares,  and  3  per  cent,  on  its  ordinary 
shares.  The  Haidar  Pasha  Harbour  Company  haa  paid  8  per 
cent. 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        171 

are  available  for  narrow-gauge  petrol-driven 
motors,  and  the  broad-gauge  line  will  soon  be 
complete.  Meanwhile  railway  construction  is 
pushed  on  in  all  directions  under  German  con- 
trol, and  the  Turkish  Minister  of  Finance  (Au- 
gust 1916)  allocated  a  large  sum  of  German 
paper  money  for  the  construction  of  ordinary 
roads,  military  roads,  local  government  roads, 
all  of  which  are  new  to  Turkey,  but  which  will 
be  useful  for  the  complete  German  occupation 
which  is  being  swiftly  consolidated.  To  stop  the 
mouths  of  the  people,  all  political  clubs  have 
been  suppressed  by  the  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
for  Prussia  does  not  care  for  criticism.  To  sup- 
ply German  ammunition  needs,  lead  and  zinc 
have  been  taken  from  the  roofs  of  mosques  and 
door-handles  from  mosque-gates,  and  the  iron 
railings  along  the  Champs  de  Mars  at  Pera  have 
been  carted  away  for  the  manufacture  of  bombs. 
Not  long  after  eight  truck-loads  of  copper  were 
sent  to  Germany:  these,  I  imagine,  represent 
the  first  produce  of  copper  roofs  and  utensils. 
A  Turco-German  convention  signed  in  Berlin  in 
January  of  this  year,  permits  subjects  of  one 
country  to  settle  in  the  other  while  retaining 
their  nationality  and  enjoying  trading  and  other 
privileges.  In  Lebanon  Dr.  Konig  has  opened 
an  agricultural  school  for  Syrians  of  all  relig- 


172        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ions.  In  the  Horns  district  the  threatening 
plague  of  locusts  in  February  1917  was  com- 
bated by  Germans;  and  a  German  expert,  Dr. 
Bucher,  had  been  already  sent  to  superintend 
the  whole  question.  For  this  concerns  supplies 
to  Germany,  as  does  also  the  ordinance  passed 
in  the  same  month  that  two-thirds  of  all  fish 
caught  in  the  Lebanon  district  should  be  given 
to  the  military  authorities  (these  are  German), 
and  that  every  fish  weighing  over  six  ounces  in 
the  Beirut  district  should  be  Korban  also.  The 
copper  mines  at  Arghana  Maden,  near  Diar- 
bekr,  are  busy  exporting  their  produce  into  Ger- 
many ;  the  coal-mines  at  Rodosto  will  very  soon 
be  making  a  large  output.^ 

There  is  no  end  to  this  penetration :  German 
water-seekers,  with  divining  and  boring  appa- 
ratus, accompanied  the  Turkish  expedition  into 
Sinai ;  Russian  prisoners  were  sent  by  Germany 
for  agricultural  work  in  Asia  Minor,  to  take 
the  place  of  slaughtered  Armenians ;  a  German- 
Turkish  treaty,  signed  January  11,  1917,  gives 
the  whole  reorganisations  of  the  economic  sys- 
tem to  a  special  German  mission.  A  Stuttgart 
journal  chants  a  characteristic  Lohgesang 
over  this  feat.    ^'That  is  how,"  it  proudly  ex- 

^  Later  in  this  year  we  find  three  trains  daily  leaving  Con- 
stantinople for  Germany,  laden  with  coal  and  military  supplies. 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        173 

claims,  *'we  work  for  the  liberation  of  peoples 
and  nationalities." 

In  the  same  noble  spirit,  we  must  suppose, 
German  legal  reforms  were  introduced  in  De- 
cember 1916,  to  replace  the  Turkish  Shuriat,  and 
in  the  same  month  all  the  Turks  in  telegraph 
offices  in  Constantinople  were  replaced  by  Ger- 
mans. Ernst  Marre  gives  valuable  advice  to 
young  Germans  settling  in  Turkey.  He  par- 
ticularly recommends  them,  knowing  how  re- 
ligion is  one  of  the  strongest  bonds  in  this  mur- 
derous race,  to  ''trade  in  articles  of  devotion, 
in  rosaries,  in  bags  to  hold  the  Koran,"  and 
points  out  what  good  business  might  be  built 
up  in  gramophones.  Earlier  in  this  year  we 
find  a  "German  Oriental  Trading  Company" 
founded  for  the  import  of  fibrous  materials  for 
needs  of  military  authorities,  and  a  great  car- 
pet business  established  at  Urfa  with  German 
machinery  that  will  supplant  the  looms  of 
Smyrna.  A  saltpetre  factor^^  is  established  at 
Konia  by  Herr  Toepfer,  whose  enterprise  is  re- 
warded with  an  Iron  Cross  and  a  Turkish  deco- 
ration. The  afforestation  near  Constantinople, 
ordered  by  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture,  is  put 
into  German  hands,  and  in  the  vilayet  of  Aidin 
(April  1916)  ninety  concessions  were  granted 
**y  German  capitalists  to  undertake  the  exploita- 


174        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

tion  of  metallic  ores.  Occasionally  the  German 
octopus  finds  it  has  gone  too  far  for  the  moment, 
and  releases  some  struggling  limb  of  its  victim, 
as,  for  instance,  when  we  see  that,  in  September 
1916,  the  German  Director 's  stamp  for  the  ' '  Im- 
perial German  Great  Radio  Station"  at  Damas- 
cus has  been  discarded  temporarily,  as  that  sta- 
tion ''should  be  treated  for  the  present  as  a 
Turkish  concern. ' ' 

A  ** Trading  and  Weaving  Company"  was  es- 
tablished at  Angora  in  1916,  an  "Import  and 
Export  Company"  at  Smyrna,  "a  Trading  and 
Industrial  Society"  at  Beirut,  a  ''Tobacco  Trad- 
ing Company"  at  Latakieh,  an  "Agricultural 
Company"  at  Tripoli,  a  "Corn  Exporting  Com- 
pany" in  Lebanon,  a  "Rebuilding  Commission" 
(perhaps  for  sacked  Armenian  houses)  at 
Konia.  More  curious  yet  will  be  a  Tourist's 
Guide  Book — a  Baedeker,  in  fact — for  travellers 
in  Anatolia,  and  the  erection  of  a  monument  in 
honour  of  Turkish  women  who  have  replaced 
men  called  up  for  military  duty.  Truly  these 
last  two  items — a  guide-book  for  Anatolia,  and 
a  monument  to  women — are  strange  enterprises 
for  Turks.  A  new  Prussian  day  is  dawning,  it 
seems,  for  Turkish  women  as  well,  for  the  Tanin 
(April  1917)  tells  us  that  diplomas  are  to  be 
conferred  on  ladies  who  have  completed  their 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        176 

studies  in  the  Technical  School  at  Constanti- 
nople. 

It  is  needless  to  multiply  instances  of  German 
penetration:  I  have  but  given  the  skeleton  of 
this  German  monster  that  has  fastened  itself 
with  tentacles  and  suckers  on  €very  branch  of 
Turkish  industry.  There  is  none  round  which 
it  has  not  cast  its  feelers — no  Semitic  money- 
lender ever  obtained  a  surer  hold  on  his  victim. 
In  matters  naval,  military,  educational,  legal, 
industrial,  financial,  Germany  has  a  strangle- 
hold. Turkey's  life  is  already  crushed  out  of 
her,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  it  has  been  crushed 
out  of  her  by  the  benevolent  Kultur-mongers, 
who,  among  all  the  Great  Powers  of  Europe,  in- 
vested their  time  and  their  money  in  the  achieve- 
ment of  the  Pan-Turkish  ideal.  Silently  and 
skilfully  they  worked,  bamboozling  their  chief 
tool,  Enver  Pasha,  even  as  Enver  Pasha  bam- 
boozled us.  As  long  as  he  was  of  service  to 
them  they  retained  him ;  for  his  peace  of  mind 
at  one  time  they  stopped  up  all  letter-boxes  in 
Constantinople  because  so  many  threatening  let- 
ters were  sent  him.  But  now  Enver  Pasha 
seems  to  have  had  his  day;  he  became  a  little 
autocratic,  and  thought  that  he  was  the  head  of 
the  Pan-Turkish  ideal.  So  he  was,  but  the  Pan- 
Turkish  ideal  had  become  Pan-Prussian,  and 


176        CRESCENT  AND  mON  CROSS 

he  had  not  noticed  the  transformation.  Talaat 
Bey  has  taken  his  place ;  it  was  he  who,  in  May 
1917,  was  received  by  the  Emperor  William,  by 
King  Ludwig,  and  by  the  Austrian  Emperor, 
and  he  who  was  the  mouthpiece  of  the  German 
efforts  to  make  a  separate  peace  with  Russia. 
Under  Czardom,  he  proclaimed,  the  existence 
of  Turkey  was  threatened,  but  now  the  revolu- 
tion has  made  friendship  possible,  for  Russia 
no  longer  desires  territorial  annexation.  And, 
oh,  how  Turkey  would  like  to  be  Russia 's  friend ! 
Enver  Pasha  has  of  late  been  somewhat  out  of 
favour  in  Berlin,  and  I  cannot  but  think  it  curi- 
ous that  when,  on  April  2,  1917,  he  visited  the 
submarine  base  at  Wilhelmshaven,  he  was  very 
nearly  killed  in  a  motor  accident.  But  it  may 
have  been  an  accident.  Since  then  I  cannot  find 
that  he  has  taken  any  more  active  part  in  Pan- 
Turkish  ideals  than  to  open  a  soup-kitchen  in 
some  provincial  town,  and  lecture  the  Central 
Committee  of  the  Young  Turks  on  the  subject 
of  internal  affairs  in  Great  Britain.  I  do  not 
like  lectures,  but  I  should  have  liked  to  hear  that 
one. 

I  have  left  to  the  end  of  this  chapter  the  ques- 
tion of  Germany 's  knowledge  of,  and  complicity 
in  the  Armenian  massacres.    From  the  tribune 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        177 

of  the  Reichstag,  on  January  15, 1916,  there  was 
made  a  definite  denial  of  the  existence  of  such 
massacres  at  all;  on  another  subsequent  occa- 
sion it  was  stated  that  Germany  could  not  in- 
terfere in  Turkish  internal  affairs. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  there  is  no  internal 
affair  appertaining  to  Turkey  in  which  Ger- 
many has  not  interfered,  the  second  of  these 
statements  may  be  called  insincere.  But  the  de- 
nial of  the  massacres  is  a  deliberate  lie.  Ger- 
many— official  Germany — knew  all  about  them, 
and  she  permitted  them  to  go  on.  A  few  proofs 
of  this  are  here  shortly  stated. 

(1)  In  September  1915,  four  months  before 
the  denial  of  the  massacres  was  made  in  the 
Reichstag,  Dr.  Martin  Niepage,  higher  grade 
teacher  in  the  German  Technical  School  at 
Aleppo,  prepared  and  sent,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
his  name,  and  that  of  several  of  his  colleagues, 
a  report  of  the  massacres  to  the  German  Em- 
bassy at  Constantinople.  In  that  report  he  gives 
a  terrible  account  of  what  he  has  seen  with  his 
own  eyes,  and  also  states  that  the  country 
Turks '  explanation  with  regard  to  the  origin  of 
these  measures  is  that  it  was  ''the  teaching  of 
the  Germans."  The  German  Embassy  at  Con- 
stantinople therefore  knew  of  the  massacres, 
and  knew  also  that  the  Turks  attributed  them 


178        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

to  orders  from  Germany.  Dr.  Niepage  also  con- 
sulted, before  sending  his  report,  with  the  Ger- 
man Consul  at  Aleppo,  Herr  Hoffman,  who  told 
him  that  the  German  Embassy  had  been  already 
advised  in  detail  about  the  massacres  from  the 
consulates  at  Alexandretta,  Aleppo,  and  Mosul, 
but  that  he  welcomed  a  further  protest  on  the 
subject. 

(2)  These  reports,  or  others  like  them,  had 
not  gone  astray,  for  in  August  1915,  the  German 
Ambassador  in  Constantinople,  Baron  Wangen- 
heim,  made  a  formal  protest  to  the  Turkish  Gov- 
ernment about  the  massacres. 

There  is,  then,  no  doubt  that  the  German 
Government,  when  it  officially  denied  the  mas- 
sacres, was  perfectly  cognisant  of  them.  It  was 
also  perfectly  capable  of  stopping  them,  for  they 
were  not  local  violences,  but  wholesale  murders 
organised  at  Constantinople.  In  support  of  this 
view  I  find  an  independent  witness  stating  that 
**  there  is  no  Turk  of  standing  who  will  not 
readily  declare  that  it  would  have  been  per- 
fectly possible  for  Germany  to  have  vetoed  the 
massacres  had  she  chosen."  Germany  had  in- 
deed already  given  assurances  that  such  mas- 
sacres should  not  occur.  She  had  assured  the 
Armenian  Katholikos  at  Adana  that  so  long  as 
Germany  has  any  influence  in  Turkey  he  need 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        179 

not  fear  a  repetition  of  the  horrors  that  had 
taken  place  under  Abdul  Hamid.  Had  she, 
then,  no  influence  in  Constantinople,  or  how  was 
it  that  she  had  obtained  complete  control  over 
all  Turkish  branches  of  government'?  The  same 
assurance  was  given  by  the  German  Ambassa- 
dor in  April  1915,  to  the  Armenian  Patriarch 
and  the  President  of  the  Armenian  National 
Council. 

So,  in  support  of  the  Pan-Turkish  ideal,  and 
in  the  name  of  the  Turkish  Allah,  the  God  of 
Love,  Germany  stood  by  and  let  the  infamous 
tale  of  lust  and  rapine  and  murder  be  told  to  its 
end.  The  Turks  had  planned  to  exterminate  the 
whole  Armenian  race  except  some  half -million, 
who  would  be  deported  penniless  to  work  on 
agricultural  developments  under  German  rule, 
but  this  quality  of  Turkish  mercy  was  too 
strained  for  Major  Pohl,  who  proclaimed  that 
it  was  a  mistake  to  spare  so  many.  But  he  was 
a  soldier,  and  did  not  duly  weigh  the  claims  of 
agriculture. 

The  choice  was  open  to  Germany;  Germany 
chose,  and  let  the  Armenian  massacres  go  on. 
But  she  was  in  a  difficulty.  "What  if  the  Turk- 
ish Government  retorted  (perhaps  it  did  so  re- 
tort), "You  are  not  consistent.  Why  do  you 
mind  about  the  slaughter  of  a  few  Armenians! 


180        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

"What  about  Belgium  and  your  atrocities 
there?" 

And  all  the  ingenuity  of  the  Wilhelmstrasse 
would  not  be  able  to  find  an  answer  to  that. 

I  do  not  say  that  Germany  wanted  the  mas- 
sacres, for  she  did  not.  She  wanted  more  agri- 
cultural labour,  and  I  think  that,  if  only  for 
that  reason,  she  deprecated  them.  But  she  al- 
lowed them  to  go  on  when  it  was  in  her  power 
to  stop  them,  and  all  the  perfumes  of  Arabia 
will  not  wash  clean  her  hand  from  that  stinking 
horror. 

Here,  then,  are  some  of  the  problems  which 
those  who,  at  the  end  of  the  war,  will  have  to 
deal  with  the  problem  of  Turkey  must  tackle. 
It  is  just  as  well  to  recognise  that  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  Turkey  is  virtually  and  actually  a 
German  colony,  and  t^^e  most  valuable  colony 
that  Germany  has  ever  had.  It  will  not  be 
enough  to  limit,  or  rather  abolish,  the  supremacy 
of  Turkey  over  aliens  and  martyrised  peoples; 
it  will  be  necessary  first  to  abolish  the  suprem- 
acy of  Germany  over  Turkey.  To  do  this  the 
victory  of  our  Allied  Nations  must  be  complete, 
and  Germany's  octopus  envelopment  of  Turkish 
industries  severed.  Otherwise  we  shall  imme- 
diately  be  confronted  with  a  Germany  that  al- 
ready reaches  as  far  as  Mesopotamia.    That  is 


DEUTSCHLAND  UBER  ALLAH        181 

done  now ;  and  that,  before  there  can  come  any 
permanent  peace  for  Europe,  must  be  undone. 
Nothing  less  than  the  complete  release  of  that 
sucker  and  tentacle  embrace  will  suffice. 

Note 

As  throwing  a  sidelight  on  the  German  complicity  in 
the  Armenian  massacres,  the  following  is  of  interest. 
It  is  known  that  when  Metternich  succeeded  "Wangen- 
heim  as  German  Ambassador  in  Constantinople,  he 
brought  with  him  a  speech,  written  in  Berlin,  which, 
by  the  Kaiser's  orders,  he  was  to  read  when  present- 
ing his  credentials  to  the  Sultan.  This  contained  a 
sentence  which  implied  that  Germany  had  been  un- 
able to  stop  the  Armenian  massacres.  Talaat  refused 
to  allow  the  speech  to  be  read,  obviously  because  it 
threw  the  responsibility  of  the  massacres  on  to  the 
Turks,  whereas  the  accepted  opinion  in  Turkey  was 
that  they  took  place  with  the  connivance  and  even  at 
the  instigation  of  the  Germans.  Eventually  a  com- 
promise was  arrived  at,  and  the  speech  in  toto  was 
read  privately,  the  part  referring  to  the  Armenian 
massacre  not  being  published.  .  .  ,  It  is  a  pity  that 
Germany  is  always  found  out.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  VI 

"Thy  Kingdom  Is  Dividbd" 

Let  us  oommit  the  crime  of  lese-majeste,  and 
assume  (though  the  Emperor  Wilhelm  ii.  has 
repeatedly  amiounced  to  the  contrary)  that  Ger- 
many is  not  at  the  conclusion  of  the  European 
War  to  find  herself  in  possession  of  the  world. 
She  has  prepared  her  plans  in  anticipation  of 
the  auspicious  event ;  in  fact  she  has  had  a  most 
interesting  map  of  Europe  produced  which,  ex- 
cept by  its  general  shape,  is  scarcely  recognis- 
able. The  printing  of  it,  it  is  true,  was  a  little 
premature,  for  it  shows  what  Europe  was  to 
have  been  like  in  1916,  and  the  apportionments 
are  not  borne  out  by  facts.  But  assuming  that 
there  is  some  radical  error  about  it  all  from 
her  point  of  view,  and  assuming  that  there  will 
not  be  either  a  conclusive  peace  favourable  to 
Prussian  interests,  or  even  an  inconclusive 
peace,  but  one  in  which  the  Allies  will  be  able 
to  dictate  and  enforce  their  own  terms,  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  problems  that  will  await  their  de- 
cision may  well  appal  the  most  ingenious  of 

182 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        183 

their  statesmen.  And  of  all  those  problems 
none,  it  is  safe  to  prophesy,  will  be  found  more 
difficult  of  solution  than  that  which  will  deal 
with  the  future  of  the  corrupt  and  barbarous 
Government  which  has  for  centuries  made  hell 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  We  know  more  or  less 
what  will  happen  to  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  to 
Belgium,  to  the  Trentino,  because  in  those  cases 
the  claims  of  one  or  other  of  our  Allies  to  de- 
mand a  particular  settlement  are  quite  certain 
to  be  agreed  to  by  those  not  so  immediately  and 
vitally  concerned.  But  in  the  Balkans  these 
problems  will  be  more  complicated  because  of 
conflicting  interests,  and  most  complicated  of 
all  will  they  be  in  Turkey.  One  thing,  however, 
is  certain,  that  there  can  be  no  going  back  to 
the  conditions  that  existed  there  before  the  war. 
Ever  since  the  Osmanlis  came  out  of  remoter 
Asia  into  the  Nearer  East  and  into  Europe,  the 
government  of  their  Empire  has  gone  from  bad 
to  worse.  In  the  early  days,  as  we  have  seen, 
their  policy  was  to  absorb  the  strength  of  their 
subject  peoples  by  incorporating  the  youth  of 
them  into  the  Turkish  army,  by  giving  them 
Turkish  wives,  and  by  converting  them  to  Mo- 
hammedanism. Such  was  the  foundation  of  the 
Empire  and  such  its  growth.  But  having  ab- 
sorbed their  strength,  the  Sultan's  Government 


184        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

neglected  them  until  they  milked  them  again. 
They  were  allowed  to  prosper  if  they  could :  all 
that  was  demanded  of  them  was  a  toll  of  their 
strength.  They  were  cattle,  and  for  the  right 
to  graze  on  Turkish  lands  they  paid  back  a  pail 
of  their  milV  of  manhood.  But  an  empire 
founded  on  such  principles  contains  within  it 
active  and  prolific  seeds  of  decay,  and,  as  we 
have  seen,  more  stringent  measures  had  to  be 
resorted  to  in  order  to  preserve  the  supremacy 
of  the  ruling  people.  Instead  of  absorbing 
their  strength,  Abdul  Hamid  hit  upon  the  new 
method  of  killing  them,  so  that  the  Turks  should 
still  maintain  their  domination.  And  the  policy 
set  on  foot  by  him  was  developed  but  a  few  years 
ago  into  a  scheme  of  slaughter,  which  in  atrocity 
has  far  surpassed  the  killings  of  Attila,  of  whom 
the  Nationalist  poet  sings,  or  even  the  designs 
of  the  deposed  Sultan.  The  Armenian  nation, 
with  the  exception  of  such  part  of  it  as  has  es- 
caped into  Russian  territory,  has  been  extermi- 
nated, and  similar  measures  have  been  planned 
and  indeed  begun,  against  the  Greeks,  the 
Arabs,  and  the  Jews. 

In  consequence  of  this,  in  consequence  also  of 
the  European  War,  the  policy  of  the  Balance  of 
Power  as  regards  Turkey  has  been  at  length 
abandoned.    The  Allies  have  definitely  declared 


«THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        185 

in  their  joint  note  to  President  Wilson  their 
aims  in  the  war,  and  for  those  they  have  pledged 
themselves  to  fight  until  final  and  complete  vic- 
tory wreathes  their  arms.  Among  these  aims 
are: — 

(1)  The  liberation  of  the  peoples  who  now  lie 
beneath  the  murderous  tyranny  of  the  Turks. 

(2)  The  expulsion  from  Europe  of  the  Otto- 
man Empire,  which  has  proved  itself  so  radi- 
cally alien  to  Western  civilisation. 

For  a  century  that  most  inharmonious  of  or- 
chestras called  the  Concert  of  Europe  has,  owing 
to  the  exigencies  of  the  Balance  of  Power,  kept 
Turkey  together,  and  in  particular  has  main- 
tained the  centre  of  its  government  at  Constan- 
tinople simply  because  the  Balance  of  Power 
would  be  upset  if  anybody  else  held  the  key  of 
the  straits  that  separate  Russia  from  the  Medi- 
terranean. England,  above  all  others,  was  in- 
strumental in  preserving  that  precarious  Bal- 
ance, and  England  now  must  confess  the  utter 
failure  of  her  policy  there  throughout  a  cen- 
tury. It  is  humiliating  to  acknowledge  the  com- 
plete collapse  of  that  which  for  so  many  decades 
has  been  the  keystone  of  our  ruling  with  regard 
to  our  Eastern  Empire,  but  the  arch  has  col- 
lapsed; Germany  pulled  the  keystone  out,  and 
all  our  efforts  to  exclude  Russia  from  free  ac- 


186        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

cess  to  the  Mediterranean  have  only  resulted  in 
letting  Germany  in.  To-day  she  holds  Constan- 
tinople, and  the  bitter  pill  must  be  swallowed. 
The  situation,  as  it  stands  at  this  moment,  is 
infinitely  worse  than  it  could  have  been  for  a 
century  back,  if  at  any  moment  during  those 
hundred  years  we  had  done  what  we  always 
ought  to  have  done,  and  declared  that  the  an- 
achronism of  Turkey  being  in  Europe  was  more 
intolerable  than  anything  that  could  happen  in 
consequence  of  her  expulsion.  But  we  have  ac- 
knowledged that  now.  We  have  also  acknowl- 
edged the  even  greater  anachronism  of  Turkey 
being  allowed  to  dispose  of  the  destinies  of  any 
of  those  peoples  who  inhabit  the  territories  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire,  for  the  Allies,  in  their 
joint  Note,  have  declared  that  the  remedy  of 
these  two  monstrous  abuses  forms  an  essential 
part  of  their  aim  in  the  war,  which  in  costliness 
of  life  and  of  treasure  has  already  far  exceeded 
any  cataclysm  that  could  have  come  to  Europe 
through  its  doing  its  clear  and  Christian  duty 
with  regard  to  Turkey  during  the  preceding 
hundred  years.  And  among  the  benefits  which 
eventually  mankind  will  reap  in  the  fields  that 
have  been  sown  by  the  blood  of  the  slain  will  be 
the  fact  that  the  Confusion  of  Europe  will  have  | 
accomplished  a  task  which  the  Concert  of  Eu- 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        187 

rope  was  too  craven  of  consequences  to  under- 
take; and  Constantinople  and  the  subject  peo- 
ples of  the  Turks  will  have  passed  from  the 
yoke  of  that  murderous  tyranny  for  ever. 

We  will  take  these  two  avowed  aims  of  the 
Allies  in  order,  and  first  try  to  draw  (though 
with  diffident  pencil)  some  sketch  of  what  will 
be  the  confines  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  when  we 
pluck  the  fruits  of  the  great  crusade  against  the 
barbarism  of  Turkey  and  of  Germany.  It  is 
quite  useless  to  attempt  to  keep  the  map  as  it 
was,  and  peg  out  claims  within  the  Empire 
where  we  shall  proclaim  that  Arabs  and  Greeks 
and  Armenians  shall  live  in  peace,  for  it  is  ex- 
actly that  plan  which  has  formed  a  century's 
failure.  At  the  International  Congress  of  Ber- 
lin, for  instance,  a  solemn  pact  was  entered  into 
by  Turkey  for  the  reform  of  the  Armenian  vila- 
yets. She  carried  out  her  promise  by  slaughter- 
ing every  Armenian  male,  and  outraging  every 
Armenian  woman  who  inhabited  them.  The  soi- 
disant  protectorate  of  Crete  was  not  a  whit  more 
successful  in  securing  for  the  Cretans  a  toler- 
able existence,  and  the  Allies  had  to  bring  it 
to  an  end  twenty  years  ago,  and  free  them  from 
the  execrable  yoke;  while  finally  the  repudia- 
tion by  Turkey  of  the  Capitulations,  which  pro- 
vided some  sort  of  guarantee  for  the  safety  of 


188        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

foreign  peoples  in  Turkey,  has  shown  us,  if  fur- 
ther proof  was  needed,  the  value  of  covenants 
with  the  Osmanli.  It  must  be  rendered  impos- 
sible for  Turkey  to  repeat  such  outrages:  the 
soil  where  her  alien  peoples  dwell  must  be  hers 
no  more,  and  any  Turkish  aggression  on  that 
soil  must  be,  ipso  facto,  an  act  of  war  against 
the  European  Power  under  the  protection  of 
whom  such  a  province  is  placed. 

The  difficulty  of  this  part  of  the  problem  is 
not  so  great  as  might  at  first  appear.  We  do 
not,  when  we  come  to  look  at  it  in  detail,  find 
such  a  conflict  of  interests  as  would  seem  to 
face  us  on  a  general  view.  Even  the  precarious 
Balance  of  Power  was  not  upset  by  a  quantity 
of  similar  adjustments  made  by  the  Concert  of 
Europe  during  the  last  hundred  years.  The 
Powers  freed  Serbia,  giving  Turkey  first  a 
suzerainty  over  her,  and  finally  abolishing  that : 
they  freed  Bulgaria,  they  freed  Greece,  Eastern 
Rumelia,  Macedonia,  Albania.  But,  as  by  some 
strange  lapse  of  humanity,  they  always  regarded 
the  subject  peoples  of  Turkey  in  Asia  as  more 
peculiarly  Turkish,  as  if  at  the  Bosporus  a  new 
moral  geography  began,  and  massacre  in  Asia 
was  comparatively  venial  as  compared  with 
massacre  in  Europe.  But  now  the  Allies  have 
said  that  there  must  be  no  more  massacres  in 


«THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        189 

I  ^ 

Asia,  nor  any  possibility  of  them.  To  secure 
this,  it  will  be  necessary  to  sever  from  Turkey 
the  lands  where  the  alien  peoples  dwell,  and 
form  autonomous  provinces  under  the  protec- 
torate of  one  or  other  of  the  allied  nations.  In 
most  cases  we  shall  find  that  there  is  a  protect- 
ing Power  more  or  less  clearly  indicated,  whose 
sphere  of  interest  is  obviously  concerned  with 
one  or  other  of  these  new  and  independent  prov- 
inces. 

The  alien  race  which  for  the  last  thirty  years 
has  suffered  the  most  atrociously  from  Turkish 
inhumanity  is  that  of  the  Armenians,  and  it  is 
fitting  to  begin  our  belated  campaign  of  libera- 
tion with  it.  If  the  reader  will  turn  to  the  map 
at  the  end  of  this  book,  he  will  see  that  the  dis- 
trict marked  Armenia  lies  at  the  north-west  cor- 
ner of  the  old  Ottoman  Empire,  and  extends 
across  its  frontiers  into  Russian  Trans-Cau- 
casia. That  indicates  the  district  which  once 
was  peopled  by  Armenians.  To-day,  owing  to 
the  various  Armenian  massacres,  the  latest  of 
which,  described  in  another  chapter,  was  by  far 
the  most  appalling,  such  part  of  Armenia  as  lies 
in  the  Ottoman  Empire  is  practically,  and  prob- 
ably absolutely,  depopulated  of  its  Armenian 
inhabitants.  Such  as  survive,  apart  from  the 
women  whose  lives  were  spared  on  their  pro- 


190        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

fessing  Islamism  and  entering  Turkish  harems, 
have  escaped  beyond  the  Russian  frontier,  and 
are  believed  to  number  about  a  quarter  of  a 
million.  In  the  meantime  their  homes  have 
partly  been  destroyed  and  partly  occupied  by 
mouhadjirs  from  Thrace,  and  by  the  Kurds  who 
were  largely  instrumental  in  butchering  them. 
Their  lands  have  been  appropriated  haphaz- 
ardly, by  any  who  laid  hands  on  them. 

Here  the  problem  is  of  no  great  difficulty.  The 
robber-tenants  must  be  evicted,  and  the  rem- 
nant of  the  Armenians  repatriated.  Without 
exception  they  escaped  into  Trans-Caucasia 
from  villages  and  districts  near  the  frontier, 
else  they  could  never  have  escaped  from  the  pur- 
suing Turks  and  Kurds.  Naturally,  this  rem- 
nant of  a  people  will  not  nearly  suffice  to  fill  their 
entire  province,  but  in  order  to  satisfy  the 
claims  of  justice  at  all  adequately,  the  whole 
district  of  Armenia,  as  Armenia  was  known  be- 
fore its  people  were  exterminated,  must  be  am- 
putated by  a  clean  cut  out  of  the  Ottoman  Em- 
pire and  placed,  in  an  autonomous  condition  in 
a  new  protected  province,  which  will  include  all 
the  vilayets  of  Armenia. 

There  is  no  doubt  about  a  prosperous  future 
for  Armenia  if  this  is  done,  and  to  do  less  than 
this  would  be  to  fail  signally  as  regards  the  sol- 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        191 

enm  promise  made  by  the  Allies  when  they 
stated  to  President  Wilson  their  aims  in  the 
war.  The  Armenians  have  ever  been  a  thrifty 
and  industrious  people,  possessed  of  an  inherent 
vitality  which  has  withstood  centuries  of  fiend- 
ish oppression.  With  facilities  given  them  for 
their  re-settlement,  and  with  foreign  protection 
to  establish  them,  they  will,  beyond  question, 
more  than  hold  their  own  against  the  Kurds.  As 
a  nation  they  are,  as  we  have  seen,  partly  agri- 
cultural in  their  pursuits;  but  a  considerable 
proportion  of  them  (and  these  the  more  intelli- 
gent) are  men  of  business,  merchants,  doctors, 
educationalists,  and  gravitate  to  towns.  Con- 
stantinople, as  we  shall  see,  will  be  open  to  them 
again,  where  lately  they  numbered  nearly  as 
many  as  the  entire  remnant  of  their  nation  num- 
bers now ;  so,  too,  will  be  the  cities  of  Syria,  of 
Palestine,  and  of  Mesopotamia  in  the  New  Tur- 
key which  we  are  attempting  to  sketch.  They 
will  probably  not  care  to  settle  in  the  towns 
and  districts  that  will  remain  in  the  hands  of 
their  late  oppressors  and  murderers. 

In  the  work  of  their  repatriation  none  will  be 
more  eager  to  help  than  the  American  mission- 
aries, who,  at  the  time  of  the  last  massacre,  as 
so  often  before,  showed  themselves  so  nobly 
disregardant  of  all  personal  danger  and  risk  in 


192        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

^— ^——^——■~^^— ^^^^^■^^»^^^—— —■—■————— —ii^ 

doing  their  utmost  for  their  murdered  flock,  and 
who  have  explicitly  declared  their  intention  of 
resuming  their  work.  With  regard  to  the  evic- 
tion of  Kurds  that  will  be  necessary,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  Kurd  is  a  trespasser  on 
the  plains  and  towns  of  Armenia,  and  properly 
belongs  to  the  mountains  from  which  he  was  en- 
couraged to  descend  by  the  Turks  for  purposes 
of  massacre.  Out  of  those  towns  and  plains  he 
must  go,  either  into  the  mountains  of  Armenia 
from  whence  he  came,  or  over  the  frontier  of 
Armenia  into  the  New  Turkey  presently  to  be 
defined.  He  must,  in  fact,  be  deported,  though 
not  in  the  manner  of  the  deportations  at  which 
he  himself  so  often  assisted. 

The  Armenians  who  will  thus  be  reinstated 
within  the  boundaries  of  their  own  territory, 
will  be  practically  penniless  and  without  any  of 
the  means  or  paraphernalia  of  life,  and  the  nec- 
essary outlay  on  supplies  for  them,  and  the  cost 
of  their  rehabilitation  would  naturally  fall  on 
the  protecting  Power.  They  will,  however,  be 
free  from  the  taxes  they  have  hitherto  paid  to 
the  Turks,  and  it  should  not  be  difficult  for  them 
by  means  of  taxes  far  less  oppressive,  to  pay  an 
adequate  interest  on  the  moneys  expended  on 
them.  These  would  thus  take  the  form  of  a  very 
small  loan,  the  whole  of  which  could  easily  be 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        193 

repaid  by  the  Armenians  in  the  course  of  a  gen- 
eration or  so.  Once  back  on  their  own  soil,  and 
free  from  Turkish  tyranny  and  the  possibility 
of  it,  they  are  bound  to  prosper,  even  as  they 
have  prospered  hitherto  in  spite  of  oppressions 
and  massacres  up  till  the  year  1915,  when,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  liberal  and  progressive  Na- 
tionalists organised  and  executed  the  extermi-, 
nation  from  which  so  few  escaped. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  who  the 
protecting  Power  would  be  in  the  case  of  the 
repatriated  Armenians,  for  none  but  Russia  is 
either  desirable  or  possible.  With  one  side  along 
the  Russian  frontier  of  Trans-Oaucasia,  the 
New  Armenia  necessarily  falls  into  the  sphere 
of  Russian  influence. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  not  only  Armenia 
proper,  but  part  of  Cilicia  should  also  become 
a  district  of  the  repatriated  Armenians,  with 
an  outlet  to  the  sea.  But  while  it  is  true  that 
complete  compensation  would  demand  this,  since 
Zeitun  and  other  districts  in  Cilicia  were  al- 
most pure  Armenian  settlements,  I  cannot  think 
that  such  a  restoration  is  desirable.  For,  in  the 
first  place,  the  extermination  of  the  Zeitunlis  (as 
carried  out  by  Jemal  the  Great)  was  practically 
complete.  All  the  men  were  slaughtered,  and  it 
does  not  seem  likely  that  any  of  the  women  and 


194.        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

girls  who  were  deported  reached  the  ''agricul- 
tural colony"  of  Deir-el-Zor  in  the  Arabian  des- 
ert. It  is  therefore  difficult  to  see  of  whom  the 
repatriation  would  consist.  In  the  second  place, 
the  New  Armenia  will  be  for  several  generations 
to  come  of  an  area  more  than  ample  for  all  the 
Armenians  who  have  survived  the  flight  into 
Eussia,  and  it  obviously  will  give  them  the  best 
chance  of  corporate  prosperity,  if  the  whole  of 
them  are  repatriated  in  a  compact  body  rather 
than  that  a  portion  of  them  should  be  formed 
into  a  mere  patch  severed  from  their  country- 
men by  so  large  a  distance.  Another  sphere  of 
influence  also  will  be  operating  near  the  borders 
of  Cilicia,  and  to  place  the  Armenians  under  two 
protecting  Powers  would  have  serious  disad- 
vantages. In  addition  they  never  were  a  sea- 
going people,  and  I  cannot  see  what  object 
would  be  served  by  giving  them  a  coast-board. 
In  any  case,  if  a  coast-board  was  found  neces- 
sary, the  most  convenient  would  be  the  coast- 
board  of  the  Black  Sea,  lying  adjacent  to  their 
main  territory. 

If  it  seems  clear  that  for  New  Armenia  the 
proper  protecting  Power  is  Russia,  it  is  no  less 
clear  that  for  the  freed  inhabitants  of  New  Syria, 
Arabs  and  Greeks  alike,  the  proper  protecting 
Power  is  France.     Historically  France's  con- 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        195 

nection  with  Syria  dates  from  the  time  of  the 
Crusades  in  1099;  it  has  never  been  severed, 
and  of  late  years  the  ties  between  the  two  coun- 
tries have  been  both  strengthened  and  multi- 
plied. The  Treaties  of  Paris,  of  London,  of  San 
Stefano,  and  of  Berlin  have  all  recognised  the 
affiliation ;  so,  too,  from  an  ecclesiastical  stand- 
point, have  the  encyclicals  of  Leo  xiii.  in  1888 
and  1898.  Similarly,  it  was  France  who  inter- 
vened in  the  Syrian  massacres  of  1845,  who 
landed  troops  for  the  protection  of  the  Maron- 
ites  in  1860,  and  established  a  protectorate  of 
the  Lebanon  there  a  few  years  later,  which 
lasted  up  till  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War. 
France  was  the  largest  holder,  as  she  was  also 
the  constructor,  of  Syrian  railways,  and  the  har- 
bour of  Beirut,  without  doubt  destined  to  be 
one  of  the  most  flourishing  ports  of  the  Eastern 
Mediterranean,  was  also  a  French  enterprise. 
And  perhaps  more  important  than  all  these,  as 
a  link  between  Syria  and  France,  has  been  the 
educational  penetration  which  France  has  ef- 
fected there.  What  the  American  missionaries 
did  for  Armenia,  France  has  done  for  Syria, 
and  according  to  a  recent  estimate,  of  the 
65,000  children  who  attended  European  schools 
throughout  Syria,  not  less  than  40,000  attended 
French  schools.    When  we  consider  that  that 


196        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

proportion  has  been  maintained  for  many  years 
in  Syria,  it  can  be  estimated  how  strong  the  in- 
tellectual bond  between  the  Syrian  and  the 
French  now  is.  The  French  language,  simi- 
larly, is  talked  everywhere :  it  is  as  current  as  is 
modern  Greek  in  ports  of  the  Levant. 

In  virtue  of  such  claims  few,  if  any,  would 
dispute  the  title  of  France  to  be  the  protecting 
Power  in  the  case  of  Syria.  Here  there  will 
not  be,  as  was  the  case  with  the  Armenians, 
any  work  of  repatriation  to  be  done.  Such 
devastation  and  depopulation  as  has  been 
wrought  by  Jemal  the  Great,  with  hunger  and 
disease  to  help  him,  was  wrought  on  the  spot, 
and,  though  it  will  take  many  years  to  heal  the 
wounds  inflicted  by  that  barbaric  plagiarist 
of  Potsdam,  it  is  exactly  the  deft  and  practical 
sympathy  of  the  French  with  the  race  they 
have  so  long  tended,  which  will  most  speedily 
bring  back  health  to  the  Syrians. 

It  will  be  with  regard  to  the  geographical 
limits  of  a  French  protectorate  that  most 
difficulty  is  likely  to  be  experienced;  there 
will  also  be  points  claiming  careful  solution, 
as  will  be  seen  later,  with  regard  to  railway 
control.  Northwards  and  eastwards  the 
natural  delimitations  seem  clear  enough: 
northwards    French    Syria    would    terminate 


i 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        197 

with,  and  include,  the  province  of  Aleppo, 
eastwards  the  Syrian  desert  marks  its  practi- 
cal limits,  the  technical  limit  being  supplied 
by  the  course  of  the  Euphrates.  But  south- 
wards there  is  no  such  natural  line  of  demar- 
cation; the  Arab  occupation  stretches  right 
down  till  it  reaches  the  Hedjaz,  which  already 
has  thrown  off  the  Turkish  yoke  and,  under 
the  Shereef  of  Mecca,  declared  its  independ- 
ence. Inset  into  this  long  strip  of  territory 
lies  Palestine. 

Now  to  make  one  single  French  protectorate 
over  this  very  considerable  territory  seems  at 
first  sight  a  large  order,  but  the  objections  to 
any  other  course  are  many  and  insuperable. 
Should  the  line  of  French  influence  be  drawn 
farther  north  than  the  Hedjaz,  under  what 
protection  is  the  intervening  territory  to  be 
left?  At  present  it  is  Turkish,  but  inhabited 
by  Arabs,  and,  unless  the  Allies  revoke  the 
fulness  of  their  declaration  not  to  leave  alien 
peoples  under  the  ''murderous  tyranny"  of  the 
Turks,  Turkish  it  cannot  remain.  But  both 
by  geographical  situation  and  by  racial  in- 
terest, it  belongs  to  French-protected  Syria, 
and  there  seems  no  answer  to  the  question  as 
to  what  sphere  of  influence  it  comes  under  if 
not  under  the  French.     Just  as  properly,  if 


198        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

we  take  this  view  of  the  question,  the  Sinaitic 
Peninsula,  largely  desert,  would  fall  to  Egypt, 
the  French  protectorate  being  defined  west- 
wards at  Akabah.  That  the  Eastern  side 
of  the  Gulf  of  Suez  should  not  be  under  the 
same  control  as  the  Western  has  always  been 
an  anomaly,  admitted  even  by  the  sternest 
opponents  of  the  status  of  Egypt;  and  in  the 
absence  of  any  canal  corresponding  to  that  of 
Suez,  and  debouching  into  the  Red  Sea  via  the 
Gulf  of  Akabah,  the  most  advanced  champion 
of  French  influence  in  the  Near  East  would  see 
no  objection  to  this  rectified  frontier.  There 
is  no  question  of  competition  involved.  The 
proposed  change  is  but  a  rational  rectification 
of  the  present  status. 

This  scheme  of  delimitation  leaves  Palestine 
inset  into  the  French  protectorate  of  Syria,  and 
it  is  difficult  to  see  to  whom  the  protectorate 
of  Palestine  should  be  properly  assigned  except 
to  France.  Italy  has  no  expansive  ambitions 
in  that  sector  of  the  Mediterranean;  England's 
national  sphere  of  influence  in  this  partition 
of  the  districts  now  occupied  by  alien  peoples 
in  the  Ottoman  Empire  lies  obviously  else- 
where; and  since  the  Jews,  who  settled  in 
ever-increasing  numbers  in  Palestine  before 
the    war,    and    will    assuredly    continue    to 


«THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        199 

settle  there  again,  come  and  will  come  as 
refugees  from  the  Eussian  Pale,  it  would  be 
clearly  inadvisable  to  assign  to  Russia  the 
protectorate  of  her  own  refugees.  The  only 
other  alternative  would  be  to  create  an  inde- 
pendent Palestine  for  the  Jews,  and  the  reasons 
against  that  are  overwhelming.  It  would  be 
merely  playing  into  the  hands  of  Germany  to 
make  such  an  arrangement.  For  the  last  thirty 
years  Germany  has  watched  with  personal  and 
special  interest  this  immigration  of  Jews  into 
Palestine,  seeing  in  it  not  so  much  a  Jewish  but 
a  German  expansion.  Indeed,  when,  in  the 
spring  of  this  year,  as  we  have  noticed,  a  mas- 
sacre and  deportation  of  Jews  was  planned  and 
begun  by  Jemal,  Germany  so  far  reversed  her 
usual  attitude  towards  massacres  in  general, 
and  her  expressed  determination  never  to  in- 
terfere in  Turkey's  internal  affairs,  as  to  lodge 
a  peremptory  protest,  and  of  course  got  the  per- 
secution instantly  stopped.  Her  reason  was 
that  Pan-Turkish  *  ideals"  (the  equivalent  for 
the  massacre  of  alien  people)  had  no  sort  of 
meaning  in  Palestine.  But  the  Pan-Germanic 
ideals  had  a  great  deal  of  meaning  in  Palestine, 
as  Dr.  Davis  Treitsch  {Die  Juden  der  Turkei) 
very  clearly  states.  For  "as  a  result  of  the 
war,"  he  tells  us,  ''there  will  be  an  emigration 


SOO        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

of  East-European  Jews  on  an  unprecedented 
scale  .  .  .  the  disposal  of  the  East  European 
Jews  will  be  a  problem  for  Germany  (and)  Ger- 
mans will  be  only  too  glad  to  find  a  way  out  in 
the  emigration  of  those  Jews  to  Turkey,  a  solu- 
tion extraordinarily  favourable  to  the  interests 
of  all  three  [sic]  parties  concerned.  There  are 
grounds  for  talking  of  a  German  protectorate 
over  the  whole  of  Jewry." 

Now  this  is  explicit  enough ;  Germany  clearly 
contemplated  a  protectorate  over  Palestine,  and 
if  the  Jews  who  are  German-speaking  Jews  are 
left  independent,  there  is  nothing  more  certain 
than  that,  after  the  war,  her  penetration  of  Pal- 
estine will  instantly  begin.  These  colonists  are, 
and  will  be,  in  want  of  funds  for  the  develop- 
ment and  increase  of  their  cultivated  territories, 
and  when  we  consider  the  names  of  the  promi- 
nent financiers  in  the  Central  Empires,  Men- 
delssohn, Hirsch,  Goldsmid,  Bleichroeder, 
Speyer,  to  name  only  a  few,  we  cannot  be  in 
much  doubt  as  to  the  quarter  from  which  that 
financial  assistance  will  be  forthcoming,  on  ex- 
tremely favourable  terms.  It  is  safe  to  proph- 
esy that,  if  Palestine  is  given  independence 
without  protectorate,  in  three  years  from  the 
end  of  the  war  it  will  be  under  not  only  a  pro- 
tectorate, but  a  despotism  as  complete  as  ever 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        201 

ruled  either  Turkey  or  Prussia.  True  it  is  that 
the  Zionist  movement  will  offer,  even  as  it  has 
offered  in  the  past,  a  strenuous  opposition  to 
Germanisation,  but  it  would  be  crediting  it  with 
an  inconceivable  vitality  to  imagine  that  it  will 
be  able  to  resist  the  blandishments  that  Ger- 
many is  certainly  prepared  to  shower  on  it.  For 
great  as  is  the  progress  the  Jewish  settlers 
made  in  Palestine  during  the  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  years  before  the  war,  and  strong  as  is  the 
spirit  of  Zionism,  the  emigrants  do  not  as  yet 
number  more  than  about  120,000,  nor  have  they 
under  crops  more  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the  cul- 
tivated land  of  Palestine.  They  are  as  yet  but 
settlers,  and  their  work  is  before  them.  If  left 
without  a  protectorate  they  will  not  be  with- 
out a  protectorate  long,  but  not  such  an  one  as 
the  Allies  desire.  A  protectorate  there  must  be, 
and  no  reason  is  really  of  weight  against  that 
protectorate  being  French.  Let  that,  then,  ex- 
tend from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Euphrates, 
and  from  Alexandretta  to  where  the  Hedjaz  al- 
ready prospers  in  its  self -proclaimed  independ- 
ence. It  will  be  completely  severed  from  Tur- 
key by  tracts  under  protection  of  one  or  other 
of  the  Allied  Powers,  any  expedition  through 
which  would  be  an  act  of  war. 
The  Euphrates,  then,  will  form  the  eastern 


202        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

boundary  of  the  French  protectorate:  it  will 
also,  it  is  hoped,  form  the  western  boundary  of 
the  English  protectorate,  which  we  know  as 
Mesopotamia.  Just  as  no  other  Power  has  any 
real  claim  to  Armenia,  except  Russia,  just  as 
Syria  can  fall  to  no  other  than  France,  it  seems 
equally  clear  that  the  proper  sphere  of  English 
influence  is  in  this  plain  that  stretches  south- 
wards from  the  semicircle  of  hills  where  the  two 
great  rivers  approach  each  other  near  Diarbekr 
to  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf.  As  Germany 
very  well  knows,  it  is  intimately  concerned  with 
our  safe  tenure  of  India,  and  the  hold  the  Ger- 
mans hoped  to  gain  over  it,  and  have  for  ever 
lost,  by  their  possession  of  the  Bagdad  Railway 
,was  vital  to  their  dreams  of  world-conquest. 
Equally  vital  to  England  was  it  that  Germany 
should  never  get  it.  But  its  importance  to  us  as 
a  land-route  to  India  is  by  no  means  the  only 
reason  why  an  English  sphere  of  influence  is  in- 
dicated here :  it  is  the  possibilities  it  harbours, 
which,  as  far  as  can  be  seen,  England  is  the 
only  Power  capable  of  developing,  that  cause  us 
to  put  in  a  claim  for  its  protectorate  which  none 
of  our  Allies  will  dispute. 

To  restore  Mesopotamia  to  the  rank  it  has 
held,  and  to  the  rank  it  still  might  hold  among 
the  productive  districts  of  the  East,  there  is 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        203 

needed  a  huge  capital  for  outlay,  and  a  huge 
population  of  workers.  Even  Germany,  in  her 
nightmare  of  world-dominion,  from  which  she 
shall  be  soon  dragged  screaming-awake,  never 
formulated  a  scheme  for  the  restoration  of 
Southern  Mesopotamia  to  its  productive  pre- 
eminence, and  never  so  much  as  contemplated 
it,  except  as  an  object  that  would  be  possible 
of  realisation  after  the  Empire  of  India  had 
fallen  over-ripe  into  her  pehcan  mouth.  There- 
in she  was  perfectly  right — she  usually  is  right 
in  these  dreams  of  empire  in  so  far  as  they  are 
empirical — for  she  seems  dimly  to  have  conjec- 
tured in  these  methodical  visions,  that  India 
was  the  key  to  unlock  Southern  Mesopotamia. 
But  nowhere  can  I  find  that  she  guessed  it:  I 
only  guess  that  she  guessed  it. 

This  problem  of  capital  outlay  and  of  the  nec- 
essary man-power  for  work  and  restoration  ap- 
plies exclusively  to  Southern  Mesopotamia, 
which  we  may  roughly  define  as  the  district 
stretching  from  Samara  on  the  Tigris  and  Hit 
on  the  Euphrates  to  the  Persian  Gulf.  North- 
em  Mesopotamia,  as  Dr.  Eohrbach  points  out  in 
his  Bagdadbahn,  needs  only  the  guarantee  of 
security  of  life  and  property  to  induce  the 
Kurds  to  descend  from  the  hills  and  the  Bedouin 
Arabs  to  settle  down  there ;  and  by  degrees,  un- 


204        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 


der  a  protectorate  that  insures  them  against 
massacre  and  confiscation  of  property,  there 
seems  no  doubt  that  the  area  of  cultivation  will 
spread  and  something  of  the  ancient  prosperity 
return.  The  land  is  immensely  fertile :  it  is  only 
Ottoman  misrule,  which  here,  as  everywhere 
else,  has  left  desolation  in  the  place  of  prosper- 
ity and  death  in  place  of  life.  The  rainfall  is 
adequate,  the  climate  suitable  to  those  who  will 
naturally  spread  there:  it  needs  only  freedom 
from  the  murderous  tyranny  that  has  bled  it 
for  centuries  past,  to  guarantee  its  future  pros- 
perity. 

But  Southern  Mesopotamia  is  a  totally  differ- 
ent proposition.  The  land  lies  low  between  the 
rivers,  and,  though  of  unparalleled  fertility, 
yields  under  present  conditions  but  a  precari- 
ous livelihood  to  its  sparse  population.  For 
nine  months  of  the  year  it  is  a  desert,  for  three 
months  when  its  rivers  are  in  flood,  a  swamp. 
Once,  as  we  all  know,  it  was  the  very  heart  of 
civilisation,  and  from  its  arteries  flowed  out 
the  life-blood  of  the  world.  Rainfall  was  scarce- 
ly existent,  any  more  than  it  is  existent  in  South- 
ern or  Upper  Egypt ;  but  in  the  days  of  Babylon 
the  Great  there  were  true  rulers  and  men  of 
wisdom  over  these  desiccated  regions,  who  saw 
that  every  drop  of  water  in  the  river,  that  now 


'THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED" 


205 


pours  senselessly  through  swamp  and  desert 
into  the  sea,  was  a  grain  of  corn  or  a  stalk 
of  cotton.  They  dug  canals,  they  made  reser- 
voirs, and  harnessed  like  some  noble  horse  of 
the  gods  the  torrents  that  now  gallop  unbridled 
through  dreary  deserts.  The  black  land,  the 
Sawad,  was  then  the  green  land  of  waving  corn, 
where  three  crops  were  annually  harvested  and 
the  average  yield  was  two  hundredfold  of  the 
seed  sown.  The  wheat  and  barley,  so  Herodotus 
tells  us,  were  a  palm-breadth  long  in  the  blade, 
and  millet  and  sesame  grew  like  trees.  And  in 
these  details  the  revered  Father  of  Lies  seems 
to  have  spoken  less  than  the  truth,  for  the  sta- 
tistics we  get  elsewhere  more  than  bear  out  his 
accounts  of  its  amazing  fertility.  From  its 
wealth  before  his  day  had  arisen  the  might  of 
Babylon,  and  for  centuries  later,  while  the  ca- 
nals still  regulated  the  water  supply,  it  re- 
mained the  granary  of  the  world.  More  than 
a  thousand  years  after  Herodotus  there  were 
over  12,500,000  acres  in  cultivation,  and  the  hus- 
bandmen thereof  with  the  dwellers  in  its  cities 
numbered  5,000,000  men.  Then  came  the  Arab 
invasion,  which  was  bad  enough,  but  colossally 
worse  was  the  invasion  of  the  Osmanli.  Truly 
'*a  fruitful  land  maketh  He  barren,  for  the 
wickedness  of  them  that  dwell  therein." 


I* 


,(    f  ' 


'^' 


CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 


But  the  potentiality  for  production  of  that 
great  alluvial  plain  is  not  diminished ;  the  Turks 
could  not  dispose  of  that  by  massacre,  as  a 
means  of  weakening  the  strength  of  their  sub- 
ject peoples.  It  is  still  there,  ready  to  respond 
to  the  spell  of  the  waters  of  Tigris  and  Euphra- 
tes, which  once,  when  handled  and  controlled, 
caused  it  to  be  the  Garden  of  the  Lord. 

Not  long  before  the  present  European  War 
Sir  William  Willcocks,  under  whose  guidance 
the  great  modern  irrigation  works  at  Assouan 
were  constructed,  was  appointed  adviser  to  the 
Ottoman  Ministry  of  Public  Works,  and  his  re- 
port on  the  Irrigation  of  Mesopotamia  was  is- 
sued in  1911.  He  tells  us  that  the  whole  of  this 
delta  of  the  Sawad  is  capable  of  easy  levelling 
and  reclamation.  It  would  naturally  be  a  gi- 
gantic scheme,  and  he  takes  as  a  basis  to  start 
on  the  question  of  the  refertilisation  of  4,000,- 
000  acres.  Into  the  details  of  it  we  need  not 
go,  but  his  conclusions,  calculated  on  a  thor- 
oughly conservative  basis,  give  the  following 
results.  He  proposes  to  restore,  of  course  with 
modem  technical  improvements,  the  old  system 
of  canals,  and,  allowing  for  interest  on  loans, 
estimates  the  total  expense  at  £26,000,000  (or 
the  cost  of  the  war  for  about  three  days).  On 
this  the  annual  value  of  the  crops  would  pay  31 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        207 

per  cent.  The  figures  need  no  enlargement  in 
detail  and  no  comment. 

But  now  comes  the  difficulty :  the  construction 
of  the  irrigation  works  is  easy,  the  profits  are 
safe  so  long  as  the  Tigris  and  ''the  ancient 
river,'*  the  river  Euphrates,  run  their  course. 
But  all  the  irrigation  works  in  the  world  will 
not  raise  a  penny  for  the  investor  or  a  grain 
for  the  miller  unless  there  are  men  to  sow  and 
gather  the  crops.  A  million  are  necessary: 
where  are  they  to  come  from?  And  the  answer 
is  ''Egypt  and  India." 

This  is  precisely  why  the  protectorate  of  Mes- 
opotamia and  its  future  must  be  in  English 
hands,  why  no  other  country  can  undertake  it 
with  hope  of  success.  Even  the  ingenious  Dr. 
Rohrbach,  whose  BagdadbaJm  I  have  quoted  be- 
fore, is  forced  to  acknowledge  that  there  is  no 
solution  to  the  man-power  problem  except  by 
the  "introduction  of  Mohammedans  from  other 
countries  where  the  climatic  conditions  of  Irak 
prevail."  It  is  true  that  he  starts  upon  the  as- 
sumption that  Mesopotamia  will  remain  Turk- 
ish (under  a  German  protectorate,  as  we  read 
between  his  lines),  with  which  we  must  be  per- 
mitted to  disagree,  but  his  conclusion  is  quite 
correct.  Even  under  German  protection  he 
realises  that  citizens  of  well-governed  states 


208        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

will  not  flock  by  the  million  to  put  themselves  un- 
der Turkish  control,  and  he  dismisses  as  inade- 
quate the  numbers  of  Syrians,  Arabs,  Arme- 
nians and  Jews  who  can  be  transported  to  Meso- 
potamia from  inside  the  boundaries  of  the  Ot- 
toman Empire.  Their  numbers  are  even  more 
inadequate  since  the  Armenian  massacres  per- 
mitted by  Dr.  Eohrbaeh's  Fatherland,  and  even 
he  cannot  picture  a  million  of  his  bwn  country- 
men forsaking  the  beer-gardens  for  summers 
in  the  Sawad.  He  does  not  positively  state  our 
answer,  that  it  is  from  India  and  Egypt  that  the 
man-power  will  be  supplied,  but,  as  mentioned 
before,  I  think  he  guesses  it.  His  prophetic 
gifts  are  not  convincing  enough  to  himself  to  let 
him  state  the  glorious  future,  when  India  and 
Egypt  shall  become  German,  but  that,  I  feel 
sure,  is  his  vision:  ''he  sees  it,  but  not  now; 
he  beholds  it,  but  not  nigh. ' ' 

But  we  can  give  the  answer  which  he  does  not 
quite  like  to  state,  since  for  the  English  it  is 
clearly  more  easily  realisable.  The  native  la- 
bour we  can  supply  from  Egypt  and  India,  es- 
pecially India,  will  furnish  a  million  labourers, 
and,  if  we  wished,  two  millions  without  dif- 
ficulty. But  no  Power  except  England  can  fur- 
nish it.  And  that,  I  submit,  is  the  solution  of 
the  problem  of  Mesopotamia;  a  solution  well 


«THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        209 

within  the  power  of  English  enterprise  to  at- 
tain in  the  hands  of  such  men  as  have  already 
bridled  the  Nile,  the  water-horsemen  of  the 
world.  And  I  cannot  do  better,  in  trying  to 
convey  the  spirit  in  which  this  work  of  reclama- 
tion should  be  undertaken,  than  by  quoting  some 
very  noble  words  from  Sir  William  Willcocks  's 
report,  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  desolation  that 
has  come  to  this  garden  of  fruitfulness  through 
"wicked  stewardship. 

"The  last  voyage  I  made  before  coming  to 
this  country  was  up  the  Nile  from  Khartoum 
to  the  Equatorial  lakes.  In  this  most  desperate 
and  forbidding  region  I  was  filled  with  pride 
to  think  I  belonged  to  a  race  whose  sons,  even 
in  this  inhospitable  waste  of  waters,  were  strug- 
gling in  the  face  of  a  thousand  discouragements 
to  introduce  new  forest  trees  and  new  agricul- 
tural products  and  ameliorate  in  some  degree 
the  conditions  of  life  of  the  naked  and  miser- 
able inhabitants.  How  should  I  have  felt,  if  in 
traversing  the  deserts  and  swamps  which  to-day 
represent  what  was  the  richest  and  most  famous 
tract  in  the  world,  I  had  thought  that  I  was  the 
scion  of  a  race  in  whose  hands  God  has  placed, 
for  hundreds  of  years,  the  destinies  of  this 
great  country,  and  that  my  countrjTnen  could 
give  no  better  account  of  their  stewardship  than 


210        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

?  ! 

the  exhibition  of  two  mighty  rivers  flowing  be- 
tween deserts  to  waste  themselves  in  the  sea  for 
nine  months  of  the  year,  and  desolating  every- 
thing in  their  way  for  the  remaining  three? 
No  effort  that  Turkey  can  make  can  be  too  great 
to  roll  away  the  reproach  of  those  parched  and 
weary  lands,  whose  cry  ascends  to  heaven." 

But  the  harvests  of  Mesopotamia,  when  gath- 
ered in,  must  needs  be  transported,  and  for  that 
railways  are  necessary.  Water  transport  would, 
of  course,  carry  them  easily  down  to  the  Per- 
sian Gulf,  but  the  supply  will  be  mainly,  if  not 
wholly,  wanted  westwards,  and  it  must  be  con- 
veyed to  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  Al- 
ready, in  preparation  for  world-conquest,  Ger- 
many has  proceeded  far  with  her  construction 
of  the  Bagdad  Railway,  which  was  intended, 
after  her  absorption  of  Turkey,  to  link  up  Ber- 
lin with  her  next  Oriental  objective,  namely, 
India;  the  Taurus  has  been  tunnelled,  the  Eu- 
phrates bridged,  and  but  for  a  hiatus  of  a  few 
miles  the  line  is  practically  complete  from 
Constantinople  into  Northern  Mesopotamia. 
But  its  route  was  chosen  for  German  strategic 
reasons,  for  the  linking  up  of  Berlin  with  Con- 
stantinople and  Bagdad.  This,  it  may  be  per- 
mitted to  say,  does  not  form  part  of  the  schemes 
of  the  Allies :  it  is  to  snap  rather  than  weld  such 


«THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        gll 

links  that  they  have  taken  the  field.  What  we 
want  in  the  matter  of  railway  transport  for  the 
harvests  of  Mesopotamia,  and  generally  for  our 
Eastern  communications,  is  not  a  line  that 
passes  through  Turkish  and  German  soil,  and 
terminates  at  Berlin,  but  one  which,  after  the 
directest  possible  land-route,  reaches  the  Medi- 
terranean and  terminates  in  suitable  ports. 

The  reader  therefore  is  requested  to  untlmik 
the  present  Bagdad  Eailway  altogether,  to 
''scrap"  it  in  his  mind,  as  it  will  be  probably 
scrapped  on  the  map,  since  it  is  utterly  useless 
for  our  purposes.  For  taking  Aleppo  as 
(roughly)  the  half-way  house  in  the  existent 
line,  we  find  that  the  western  half  of  it  lies  in 
Asia  Minor,  in  territory  which,  as  we  shall  see, 
will  remain  Turkish,  while  the  eastern  half  of  it 
makes  a  long  detour  instead  of  striking  directly 
for  Bagdad.  After  our  experience  with  Turkey 
there  is  nothing  less  conceivable  than  that  we 
should  allow  a  single  mile  of  our  new  Mesopo- 
tamia Railway  to  run  through  the  territory  of 
the  Turks,  for  who  knows  that  she  might  not 
(say  when  harvests  are  ripe  and  ready  for  de- 
livery), on  any  arbitraiy  pretext,  close  or  de- 
stroy the  line,  even  as  before  now  she  has  closed 
the  Dardanelles!  Besides,  for  our  purposes, 
a  line  that  goes  to  Contantinople   (in  whoso- 


212        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

ever  hands  Constantinople  may  be  after  the 
war)  is  out  of  the  way  and  altogether  unsuit- 
able. Eastwards,  again,  from  Aleppo  the  pres- 
ent Bagdad  line  is  circuitous  and  indirect,  ad- 
mirably adapted  to  the  German  purposes  for 
which  it  was  constructed,  but  utterly  unadapted 
jto  ours. 

Let  us  then  ''scrap"  the  existent  Bagdad 
route  altogether,  and  consider  not  what  the 
Germans  want,  but  what  we  want,  which,  as  has 
been  already  stated,  is  a  direct  land  communica- 
tion with  suitable  Mediterranean  ports.  Of 
those  there  are  three  obvious  ones,  Alexandret- 
ta,  Tripoli,  and  Beirut,  of  which  Beirut  is  a 
long  way  the  first  in  importance  and  potential- 
ity of  increased  importance.  Two  possible 
routes  therefore  would  seem  to  suggest  them- 
selves, one  running  from  Alexandretta  to  Alep- 
po, and  thence  following  pretty  closely  the 
course  of  the  Euphrates  till  it  reaches  Hit,  and 
from  there  striking  directly  to  Bagdad.  Aleppo 
is  already  connected  with  Tripoli  and  El  Mina 
(the  actual  port  of  Tripoli),  and  also  with  Bei- 
rut by  branch  lines  making  a  junction  at  Homs, 
and  thus  all  those  ports  will  be  brought  to- 
gether on  one  system.  But  if  the  reader  will 
glance  at  the  map,  he  will  see  that  by  far  the 
most  direct  communication  with  Bagdad  would 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        213 

be  to  run  the  railway  direct  from  there  to 
Horns,  thus  making  Horns  rather  than  Aleppo 
the  central  junction  of  the  system.  From  Homs 
lines  would  run  northward  to  Aleppo,  due  west 
to  Tripoli,  and  south-west  to  Beirut.  Either 
of  those  routes,  in  any  case,  would  be  infinitely 
preferable  to  the  long  loop  which  the  present 
Bagdad  Railway  traverses,  as  planned  on  Ger- 
man lines  and  for  German  requirements.  The 
new  railway  will  thus  lie  exclusively  in  terri- 
tory under  French  and  English  protectorate, 
and  will  probably  be  their  joint  enterprise  and 
property. 

Prospectively  then,  as  regards  the  fulfilment 
of  the  solemn  pledge  of  the  Allies  to  liberate 
subject  peoples  from  the  murderous  tyranny  of 
the  Turks,  we  have  discussed  the  future  of  Ar- 
menia, of  Syria,  of  Palestine,  and  of  Mesopota- 
mia. All  those  are  well  defined  districts,  and 
the  demarcation  of  their  respective  protecto- 
rates should  not  present  great  difficulties.  But 
there  remains,  before  we  pass  on  to  the  prob- 
lem of  Constantinople,  a  further  district  less 
easily  defined,  largely  inhabited  by  European 
peoples  whose  liberty  in  the  future  we  are 
pledged  to  secure.  This  is  the  Mediterranean 
coastline  to  the  south  and  west  of  Asia  Minor, 
the  towns  of  which  have  been  so  extensively 


214        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

peopled  and  made  prosperous  by  Greeks  and 
Italians.  Similarly  among  those  of  our  Euro- 
pean Allies  who  are  desirous  and  capable  of 
Eastern  expansion,  there  remains  one,  Italy, 
whose  rights  to  partake  in  this  Turkish  parti- 
tion we  have  not  yet  considered.  In  the  shifting 
kaleidoscope  of  national  war-politics,  it  seems 
at  the  moment  of  writing  by  no  means  impos- 
sible that  Greece,  having  at  length  got  rid  of  a 
treacherous  and  unstable  Reuben  of  a  monarch, 
may  redeem  her  pledge  to  Serbia,  in  which  case, 
no  doubt,  she  too  would  state  the  terms  of  her 
desired  and  legitimate  expansion.  But  these 
would  more  reasonably  be  concerned  with  the 
redistribution  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  which 
does  not  come  within  the  scope  of  this  book, 
and  we  may  prophesy  without  fear  of  invoking 
the  Nemesis  that  so  closely  dogs  the  heels  of 
seers,  that  Italy  will  legitimately  claim  (or  per- 
haps has  already  claimed)  the  protectorate  of 
this  valuable  littoral.  Certain  it  is  that,  when 
peace  returns,  the  large  population  of  Greeks 
and  Itahans  once  resident  (and  soon  again  to 
be)  on  these  coasts,  must  be  given  the  liberty 
and  security  which  they  will  never  enjoy  so 
long  as  they  remain  in  Turkish  hands,  and  the 
hands  that  have  earned  the  right  to  be  protect- 
ing Power  are  assuredly  Italian.     Along  the 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        215 

south  coast  a  line  including  the  Taurus  range 
would  seem  to  suggest  a  natural  frontier  inland 
from  Adana  on  the  east  to  the  south-west  cor- 
ner of  Asia  Minor,  and  from  there  a  similar 
strip  would  pass  up  the  coast  as  far  as,  and  in- 
clusive of,  Smyrna.  That  at  least  Italy  has 
every  right  to  expect,  and  there  seems  no  great 
fear  that  among  the  International  Councils 
there  will  arise  a  dissentient  voice.  The  inland 
boundary  on  the  west  coast  is  the  difficult  sec- 
tion of  this  delimitation,  and  into  the  details  of 
that  it  would  be  both  rash  and  inexpedient  to 
enter. 


n 


We  pass,  then,  to  the  second  avowed  object 
of  the  Allies,  namely,  the  expulsion  from 
Europe  of  the  Ottoman  rule,  which  has  proved 
itself  so  radically  alien  to  Western  civilisation. 
This  must  be  taken  to  include  not  only  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  Turkish  control  from  Thrace 
and  Constantinople,  but  from  the  eastern  side 
as  well  of  the  Bosporus,  the  Sea  of  Marmora, 
and  the  Dardanelles.  At  no  future  time  must 
Turkey  be  in  a  position  to  command  even  par- 
tially a  single  yard  of  that  momentous  chan- 
pel   through   which   alone   our   Allies,   Eussia 


216        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

and  Rumania,  have  access  to  the  Mediterranean. 
Though  this  was  not  formally  stated  in  the  Al- 
lies' reply  to  President  Wilson,  it  is  clearly  part 
and  parcel  of  the  object  in  view,  for  while  the 
Ottoman  Empire  retains  the  smallest  control  on 
either  side  of  either  of  the  Straits,  she  is  so  far 
able  to  interfere  in  European  concerns,  in 
which  she  must  never  more  have  a  hand.  The 
east  shore,  then,  of  the  Straits  and  the  Sea  of 
Marmora,  as  well  as  the  west,  must  be  under 
the  control  of  a  Power,  or  a  group  of  Powers, 
not  alien  to  Western  civilisation.  Germany  and 
her  allies  therefore,  no  less  than  Turkey,  must 
be  excluded  from  the  guardianship  of  the 
Straits. 

As  we  have  had  previous  occasion  to  note, 
this  ejection  of  the  Turkish  power  from  Con- 
stantinople is  the  absolute  reversal  of  Euro- 
pean and,  in  especial,  of  English  policy  for  the 
last  hundred  years.  No  crime  that  the  Ottoman 
Grovernment  could  commit,  no  act  of  barbarism, 
would  ever  persuade  us  to  do  away  with  the 
anachronism  of  Turkey's  existence  in  Europe; 
but  at  last  the  seismic  convulsion  of  the  war 
has  knocked  this  policy  into  a  heap  of  disjected 
ruins,  and  it  can  never  be  rebuilt  again  on  the 
old  lines.  For  among  our  other  avowed  objects 
in  prosecuting  the  war  to  its  victorious  end, 


^^THY  KINGDO:\I  IS  DIVIDED"        21T 

we  have  pledged  ourselves  to  uphold  the  right 
which  all  peoples,  whether  small  or  great,  have 
to  the  enjoyment  of  full  security  and  free  eco- 
nomic development.  But  while  Turkey  can 
close  the  Straits  at  her  own  arbitrary  will,  or  at 
the  bidding  of  a  superior  and  malevolent  Power, 
and  block  the  passage  of  ships  from  Russian 
and  Rumanian  ports  into  the  Mediterranean, 
the  economic  development  of  both  these  coun- 
tries is  seriously  menaced.  Three  times  within 
the  last  six  years  has  she  exercised  that  right, 
and  while  she  holds  the  shores  of  the  Straits 
she  can  at  any  moment  blockade  all  southern 
Russian  ports.  That  such  power  should  be  in 
the  hands  of  any  nation  is  highly  undesirable ; 
that  it  should  be  in  the  hands  of  a  corrupt  des- 
potism like  Turkey,  especially  now  that  Ger- 
many, as  things  stand,  can  dictate  to  Turkey 
when  and  what  she  pleases,  is  a  thing  unthink- 
able by  the  most  improvident  of  statesmen.  Al- 
ready we  have  paid  dearly  enough  for  the  pusil- 
lanimity of  a  hundred  years:  it  is  impossible 
that  we  should  ever  allow  a  similar  bill  to  be 
again  presented.  Whatever  be  the  guardian- 
ship of  the  Straits,  whoever  the  holder  of  Con- 
stantinople, it  will  not  be  Turkey. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and  indeed  till 
after  the  revolution  in  Russia,  it  was  announced 


218        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

and  stated  as  an  axiom  that  on  the  conclusion  of 
peace,  Russia  should  be  the  door-keeper  of  what 
after  all  is  her  own  lodge-gate.  Subsequently, 
in  the  unhappy  splits  and  disintegration  of  her 
Government,  it  was  announced  that  she  fa- 
voured peace  without  annexation — in  other 
words,  that  she  neither  claimed  nor  desired  the 
guardianship  of  Constantinople.  But  I  think 
we  should  be  utterly  wrong  if  we  regarded  that 
as  an  expression  of  the  will  of  the  Russian  peo- 
ple :  it  is  far  more  probable  that  it  was  the  ex- 
pression of  the  will  of  Germany,  directly  in- 
spired by  German  influence  with  a  view  to  con- 
cluding a  separate  peace  with  Russia.  As  we 
have  seen,  it  had  its  due  effect  in  Turkey,  and 
Talaat  Bey  gave  vent  to  pious  ejaculations  of 
thanksgiving,  that  now  all  cause  of  quarrel  with 
Russia  was  removed,  and  Turkey  and  she  could 
be  friends.  It  is  possible  that  when  out  of  the 
confused  cries  there  again  rises  from  Russia 
the  clear  call  of  the  people's  voice,  we  shall 
find  her  wishing  to  set  in  order  her  own  house 
before  she  projects  herself  on  new  missions, 
but,  as  far  as  the  manifesto  of  "peace  without 
territorial  annexation"  goes,  we  shall  be  wise 
to  regard  it  for  the  present  with  the  profound- 
est  suspicion.    It  sounds  far  more  like  the  tones 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        219 

of  the  Central  European  wolf  than  those  of  Lit- 
tle Keel  Riding  Hood's  proper  grandmother. 

But  be  Russia's  decision  what  it  may,  the 
Turk  will  hold  sway  no  longer  in  Thrace  or 
Constantinople,  or  on  the  shores  of  the  Straits 
of  the  Sea  of  Marmora.  There  is,  of  course,  no 
question  of  deporting  the  whole  of  the  Turkish 
population  that  lives  in  those  regions,  nor  would 
it  be  desirable,  even  if  it  were  possible,  to  real- 
ise Gladstone's  robust  vision  of  seeing  every 
Turk,  ''bag  and  baggage,"  clear  out  from  the 
provinces  they  have  desolated  and  profaned. 
But  if  not  under  Russia,  then  under  the  joint 
control  of  certain  of  the  Allied  Powers  there 
will  be  a  complete  reconstruction  of  the  admin- 
istration of  those  districts.  The  headquarters 
of  the  protectorate  will  doubtless  be  at  Con- 
stantinople, which  will  be  reorganised  some- 
what on  the  lines  of  the  Treaty  Port  of  Shang- 
hai, and  will  be  open  to  the  ships  of  all  nations. 
The  security  of  the  town  must  be  assured  by  a 
military  garrison  either  of  mixed  troops  of  the 
controlling  nations,  or  possibly  by  a  rotation 
of  troops  drawn  from  the  armies  of  each  in 
turn.  More  important  even  than  this  will  be 
the  adequate  control  of  the  Straits  by  sea.  A 
naval  base  must  be  formed,  which  by  the  gospel 
of  the  freedom  of  the  seas  (but  not  according 


220         CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

to  St.  Goeben  and  the  submarine  disciples)  will 
constitute  a  patrolling  police  force  of  the  wa- 
ters. Whether  the  system  of  fortifications  and 
defences  that  lately  rendered  the  Dardanelles 
impregnable  shall  be  retained  or  not  is  a  ques- 
tion demanding  the  most  careful  consideration. 
Some  will  hold  that  they  should  be  maintained 
in  order  to  insure  that  none  but  the  guarantors 
of  the  freedom  of  the  Straits  shall  ever  take 
possession  of  them:  others  that  they  shall  be 
utterly  dismantled  and  destroyed,  so  that  the 
closing  of  the  Straits  shall  be  an  impossibility. 
The  matter  really  turns  on  the  question  as  to 
the  extent  to  which  the  Allies  will  have  the  pru- 
dence to  cut  Germany's  claws  when  the  war  is 
over.  It  is  eminently  to  be  hoped  that  they 
will  be  cut  so  short  that  never  again  will  they  be 
able  to  show  those  chiselled  talons  beyond  her 
velvet — that  sense,  in  fact,  will  allow  sentiment 
no  word  to  say.  Unfortunately,  there  are  a 
great  many  people  the  basis  of  whose  character 
consists  of  a  washy  confidence  in  the  good  in- 
tentions of  everybody.  Most  mistakenly  they 
call  it  Christianity. 

Here,  then,  has  been  outlined  thd  effect  of  the 
Allies'  declared  aims.  Such  territories  as  Tur- 
key holds  in  Europe,  such  control  as  she  pos- 
sesses over  the  free  passage  of  the  Straits  must 


«THY  KINGDO^Nl  IS  DIVIDED"        221 

pass  from  her,  and  the  alien  peoples,  who  for 
centuries  have  fainted  and  bled  underneath  her 
infamous  yoke,  must  be  led  out  of  the  land  of 
bondage.  As  we  have  seen  throughout  preced- 
ing chapters,  it  was  the  fixed  policy  of  the  Otto- 
man Government  to  rid  itself  of  their  presence, 
and  already  it  has  gone  far  in  its  murderous 
mission.  Indeed  the  avowed  aims  of  the  Allies, 
when  accomplished,  will  do  that  work  for  her, 
for  the  Allies  are  determined  to  remove  those 
peoples  from  Turkey.  The  difference  of  execu- 
tion, however,  consists  in  this,  that  they  will  not 
remove  Arabs  and  Greeks  and  Italians  and 
Jews,  as  Turkey  has  already  done  with  the  Ar- 
menians by  the  simple  process  of  massacres,  but 
by  a  process  no  less  simple,  namely,  of  taking 
out  of  the  territories  of  the  Ottoman  Empire 
the  districts  where  such  peoples  dw^ell.  The 
Allies  will  accomplish,  in  fact,  for  the  Turks 
that  policy  of  Ottomanisation  which  was  the  aim 
of  Abdul  Hamid,  and  has  been  the  aim 
of  his  more  murderous  successors.  Turkey 
shall  henceforth  be  for  the  Turks :  she  shall  no 
more  be  in  ''danger"  from  the  defenceless  na- 
tions, who  at  present  exist  within  her  borders. 
The  Sultan  of  Turkey,  in  some  year  of  grace 
now  not  far  distant,  will  find  that  his  Otto- 
manisation has  been  done  for  him,  and,  though 


222        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

his  realm  is  curtailed,  he  will  have  his  rest 
broken  no  more  by  the  thought  of  Arab  risings, 
nor  will  he  have  to  devise  measures  that  will 
solve  the  Arab  question.  Except  for  a  strip 
along  the  west  and  south  coast,  all  Asia  Minor 
and  Anatolia  will  be  his  from  the  Black  Sea  to 
the  Mediterranean,  but  Syria,  Armenia,  the 
coast  of  Asia  Minor,  Palestine,  and  Mesopo- 
tamia shall  have  passed  from  him.  It  is  no  dis- 
memberment of  an  Empire  that  the  Allies  con- 
template, for  they  cannot  dismember  limbs  that 
never  belonged  to  the  real  trunk.  It  was  a  des- 
potic military  control  that  the  Osmanlis  had 
established;  they  always  regarded  their  subject 
peoples  as  aliens,  whom  they  did  not  scruple  to 
destroy  if  they  exhibited  symptoms  of  progress 
and  civilisation.  Henceforth,  the  Turkish  Gov- 
ernment shall  govern  Turks,  and  Turks  alone. 
That  for  many  years  has  been  its  aim,  and,  by 
the  disastrous  dispensation  of  fate,  it  has  been 
largely  able  to  realise  its  purpose.  Now,  though 
by  different  methods,  the  Allies  will  see  thor- 
ough accomplishment  of  it.  There  will  be  no 
question,  of  course,  of  turning  out  or  of  deport- 
ing Turks  who  live  in  Syria,  in  Armenia,  in  Con- 
stantinople, for  the  ways  of  the  Allies  are  not 
those  of  Talaat  and  Enver  and  Jemal  the  Great. 
Where  to-day  Turks  dwell,  there  shall  they  con- 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        223 

tinue  to  dwell,  but  they  must  dwell  there  in 
peace  in  equal  liberties  and  rights  with  the 
once-subject  peoples  whom  the  Allies  shall  have 
delivered.  If  they  do  not  like  that  they  can 
migrate,  not  by  forced  marches  and  under  the 
guardianship  of  murderous  Kurds,  but  in  pro- 
tection and  security,  to  the  lands  where  they 
can  still  enjoy  the  beneficent  sway  of  their  own 
governors,  and  be  Ottomanised  to  the  top  of 
their  bent.  But  Syrians  and  Armenians  and 
Greeks  and  Jews  will  be  Ottomanised  no  longer. 
The  Turk  was  always  a  fighter,  disciplined 
and  courageous,  and  he  has  never  lost  that  vir- 
tue of  valour.  But  he  has  been  a  fighter  be- 
cause he  has  always  lived  under  a  military  des- 
potism which  demanded  his  services,  and  it  is 
much  to  be  doubted  whether  his  qualities  in  this 
regard  will  for  the  future  be  exercised  as  they 
have  been  in  the  past.  For  the  Turkish  armies, 
in  so  far  as  they  have  consisted  of  Turks,  have 
been  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  recruited  from  the 
peasantry  of  Anatolia,  who,  when  not  sum- 
moned to  their  country's  colours,  or  ordered  to 
maltreat  and  massacre,  are  quiet,  rather  indo- 
lent foll^,  content  to  plough  their  lands  and  reap 
an  exiguous  but  sufficient  harvest.  And  for 
their  lords  and  governors,  who,  until  Prussia 
assumed  command  of  the  Turkish  armies,  there 


QM        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

will  no  longer  be  either  the  possibility  of  fur- 
ther conquests  as  in  the  old  Osmanli  days,  or, 
in  less  progressive  times,  the  necessity  for  se- 
curing Ottoman  supremacy  over  the  huge  ill- 
knit  lands  which  it  governed.  But  now,  instead 
of  having  alien  and  defenceless  tribes  within 
their  borders,  tribes  forbidden  to  bear  arms  and 
chafing  at  the  Turkish  yoke,  they  will  see  free 
peoples  under  the  protectorates  of  Powers  that 
are  capable  of  self-defence  and,  if  necessary,  of 
inflicting  punishment.  Russia,  France,  Eng- 
land, Italy,  all  allied  nations,  will  be  established 
in  close  proximity  to  the  Turkish  frontiers,  and 
the  New  Turkey  will  be  as  powerless  for  aggres- 
sion as  she  will  be  for  defence,  should  she  pro- 
voke attack.  But  within  their  borders  there 
may  the  Osmanlis  dwell  secure  and  undis- 
turbed, so  long  as  they  conform  to  the  habits  of 
civilised  people  with  regard  to  their  neighbours, 
and  it  is  a  question  whether,  now  that  the  mili- 
tary despotism  which  has  always  misguided  the 
fortunes  of  this  people,  has  no  possible  fields 
for  conquest,  and  no  need  of  securing  security, 
the  nation  will  not  settle  down  into  the  quiet 
existence  of  small  neutral  countries.  Perhaps 
the  last  chapter  of  its  savage  and  blood-stained 
history  is  already  almost  finished,  and  in  years 


"THY  KINGDOM  IS  DIVIDED"        225 

to  come  some  little  light  of  progress  and  of  civil- 
isation may  be  kindled  in  the  abode  where  the 
household  gods  for  centuries  have  been  cruelty 
and  hate. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Grip  op  the  Octopus 

It  will  not  be  sufficient  for  the  fulfilment  of  the 
Allies'  aims  as  regards  Turkey  to  free  from 
her  barbarous  control  the  subject  peoples  dwell- 
ing within  her  borders,  for  Turkey  herself  has 
Ito  be  dehvered  from  a  domination  not  less  bar- 
baric than  her  own,  which,  if  allowed  to  con- 
tinue, would  soon  again  be  a  menace  to  the 
peace  of  the  world.  We  have  seen  in  a  previous 
chapter  how  deeply  set  in  her  are  Germany's 
nippers,  how  closely  the  octopus-embrace  en- 
velops her,  and  we  now  have  to  consider  how 
those  tentacles  must  be  unloosed  from  their 
grip,  and  what  will  be  the  condition  of  the  vic- 
tim, already  bled  white,  when  that  has  been 
done.  In  the  beginning,  as  we  have  seen,  Ger- 
many obtained  her  hold  by  professing  a  touch- 
ingly  beautiful  and  philanthropic  desire  to  help 
Turkey  to  realise  her  national  ideals,  and  her 
Pecksniffs,  Tekin  Alp  and  Herr  Ernst  Marre, 
were  bidden  to  write  parallel  histories,  the  one 

226 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        227 

describing  the  aims  of  the  Nationalist  party, 
the  other  the  benevolent  interest  which  Ger- 
many took  in  them.  Occasionally  Herr  Ernst 
Marre  could  not  but  remember  that  he  was  a 
German,  and  permitted  us  to  see  the  claws  of 
the  cat,  without  quite  letting  it  out  of  the  bag, 
but  then  he  pulled  the  strings  tight  again,  and 
only  loud  comfortable  purrings  could  be  heard, 
the  Prussian  musings  over  the  "liberation"  of 
Turkey  which  she  was  helping  to  accomplish. 
But  nowadays,  so  it  seems  to  me,  the  strings 
have  been  loosened,  and  the  claws  and  teeth  are 
clearly  visible.  It  is  not  so  long  since  Dr. 
Schnee,  Governor  of  German  East  Africa,  sent 
a  very  illuminating  document  to  Berlin  from 
which  I  extract  the  following: — 

**Do  you  consider  it  possible  to  make  a  regu- 
lation prohibiting  Islam  altogether?  The  en- 
couragement of  pig-breeding  among  natives  is 
recommended  by  experts  as  an  effective  means 
of  stopping  the  spread  of  Islam.  ..." 

That  seems  clear  enough,  and  I  can  imagine 
Talaat  Bey,  with  his  sword  of  honour  in  his 
hand,  exclaiming  with  the  Oysters  in  Alice  in 
Wonderland: — 


228        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

"After  such  kindness  that  would  be 
A  dismal  thing  to  do." 

But  I  am  afraid  that  Germany  is  contemplat- 
ing (as  indeed  she  has  always  done)  a  quantity 
of  dismal  things  to  do,  and  is  now,  like  the  Wal- 
rus and  the  Carpenter,  beginning  to  let  them 
appear.  She  has  taken  the  Turkish  oysters  out 
for  a  nice  long  walk,  and  when  the  war  is  over 
she  proposes  to  sit  down  and  eat  them.  And 
did  she  not  also  interfere  in  the  affair  of  Jew- 
ish massacres  and  declare  that  "Pan-Turkish 
ideals  have  no  sort  of  meaning  in  Palestine"? 
That  must  have  been  almost  an  unfriendly  act 
from  Turkey's  point  of  view,  for  it  cannot  be 
stated  too  clearly  that  part  of  the  price  which 
Germany  paid  for  Turkey's  entry  on  her  side 
into  the  war,  was  the  liberty,  as  far  as  Germany 
was  concerned,  of  managing  her  internal  af- 
fairs, massacres  and  the  rest,  as  best  suited  the 
damnable  doctrines  of  Ottomanisation.  The 
other  Powers  could  not  interfere,  for  they 
failed  to  force  the  Dardanelles,  and  Germany 
promised  not  to.  That  promise,  of  course,  was 
binding  on  Germany  for  just  so  long  as  it  suited 
her  to  keep  it,  and  it  suited  her  to  keep  it,  on 
the  whole,  during  the  Armenian  massacres. 
Ajid  in  that  matter  her  refusal  to  interfere  is, 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        229 

among  all  her  crimes,   the  very  flower   and 
felicity  of  her  vileness. 

Signs  are  not  wanting  that  Turkey  is  begin- 
ning to  realise  the  position  in  which  she  has 
placed  herself,  namely,  that  of  a  bankrupt  de- 
pendant at  the  mercy  of  a  nation  to  whom  that 
quality  is  a  mere  derision.  Lately  a  quantity 
of  small  incidents  have  occurred,  such  as  dis- 
putes over  the  ownership  of  properties  financed 
by  Germany  and  the  really  melodramatic  de- 
preciation in  the  German  coinage,  which  unmis- 
takably show  the  swift  ebb  of  Turkey's  mis- 
placed confidence.  More  significant  perhaps 
than  any  is  a  transaction  that  took  place  in  May 
1917,  when  Talaat  Bey  and  Enver  Pasha  took 
the  whole  of  their  private  fortunes  out  of  the 
Deutsche  Bank  in  Constantinople,  and  invested 
them  in  two  Swiss  banks,  namely,  the  Banque 
Nationale  de  Suisse,  and  the  Banque  Federale : 
they  drew  out  also  the  whole  funds  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  Union  and  Progress,  and  similarly 
transferred  them.  This  operation  was  not  ef- 
fected without  loss,  for  in  return  for  the  Turk- 
ish £1  they  received  only  thirteen  francs.  But 
it  is  significant  that  they  preferred  to  lose  over 
fifty  per  cent,  of  their  capital,  and  have  the 
moiety  secure  in  Switzerland  to  leaving  it  in 


230        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

Constantinople.^  It  is  certain  therefore  that  at 
both  ends  of  the  scale  a  distrust  of  German 
management  has  begun.  A  starving  population 
has  wrecked  trains  loaded  with  foodstuffs  going 
to  Germany,  and  at  the  other  end  the  men  with 
the  swords  of  honour  and  dishonour  deem  it 
wise  to  put  their  money  out  of  reach  of  the  great 
Prussian  cat.  That  the  Germans  themselves 
are  not  quite  at  their  ease  concerning  the  se- 
curity of  their  hold  may  also  be  conjectured,  for 
they  are,  as  far  as  possible,  removing  Turkish 
troops  from  Constantinople,  and  replacing  them 
with  their  own  regiments.  An  instance  of  this 
occurred  in  June  1917,  when,  owing  to  the  dis- 
content in  the  capital,  it  was  found  necessary 
to  guard  bridges,  residences  of  Ministers,  and 
Government  offices.  But  instead  of  recalling 
Turkish  troops  from  Galicia  to  do  this,  they 
kept  them  there  in  the  manner  of  hostages, 
mixed  up  in  German  regiments,  and  sent  picked 
bodies  of  German  troops  to  Constantinople. 
Fresh  corps  of  secret  police  have  also  been 
formed  to  suppress  popular  manifestations. 
They  are  allowed  to  *' remove"  suspects  by  any 

*  Similarly,  in  October  of  this  year,  a  new  Turkish  law  was 
passed,  prohibiting  the  acquisition  of  Turkish  land  by  foreign 
settlers.  This  is  aimed  point-blank  at  Germany,  and  has  nat- 
urally annoyed  Berlin  very  much. 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        231 

means  they  choose,  quite  in  the  old  style  of  bag 
and  Bosporus,  but  the  organisation  of  them  is 
German.  And  well  may  the  German  Govern- 
ment distrust  those  signs  of  popular  discontent 
in  a  starving  population:  already  the  people 
have  awoke  to  the  fact  that  the  German  paper 
money  does  not  represent  its  face-value,  and, 
despite  assurances  to  the  contrary,  it  is  at  a 
discount  scarcely  credible.  Three  German  £1 
notes  are  held  even  in  Constantinople  to  be  the 
equivalent  of  a  gold  £1,  while  in  the  provinces 
upwards  of  five  are  asked  for,  and  given,  in 
exchange  for  one  gold  pound.  It  is  in  vain  that 
German  manifestoes  are  put  forth  declaring 
that  all  Government  offices  will  take  the  notes 
as  an  equivalent  for  gold,  for  what  the  people 
want  is  not  a  traffic  with  Government  offices,  but 
the  cash  to  buy  food.  Even  more  serious  is  the 
fact  that  Austrian  and  Hungarian  directors  of 
banks  will  no  longer  accept  these  scraps  of 
paper.  In  vain,  too,  is  it  that  the  hungry  folk 
see  the  walls  of  the  "House  of  Friendship" 
rise  higher  and  higher  in  Constantinople,  for 
every  day  they  see  with  starving  eyes  the  trains 
loaded  with  sugar  from  Konia,  and  the  harvests 
raised  in  Anatolia  with  German  artificial  man- 
ures guarded  by  German  troops  and  rolling 
westwards  to  Berlin.    According  to  present  es- 


232        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

timates  the  harvest  this  year  is  so  vastly  more 
abundant  than  that  of  previous  years,  that  no 
comparison,  as  the  Minister  of  Agriculture  tells 
his  gratified  Government,  is  possible.  But  the 
poorer  classes  get  no  more  than  the  leavings  of 
it  when  the  armies,  which  include  the  German 
army,  have  had  their  wants  supplied.  The  gov- 
erning classes,  whom  it  is  necessary  to  feed,  are 
not  yet  suffering,  for  the  Germans  grant  them 
enough,  issuing  rations  to  such  families  as  are 
proved  adherents  of  the  German-Turkish  com- 
bination, and  until  the  pinch  of  want  attacks 
them  we  should  be  foolishly  optimistic  if  we 
thought  that  a  starving  peasantry  would  cause 
the  collapse  or  the  defection  of  Germany's  new- 
est and  most  valuable  colony.  There  is  enough 
discontent  to  make  Germany  uneasy,  but  that 
is  all.^  Long  ago  she  proved  the  efficiency  of 
her  control,  and  the  successful  pulling  of  her 
puppet-strings,  and  no  instance  of  that  is  more 
complete  than  the  brief  story  of  Yakub  Jemil 
and  the  extinction  of  him  and  his  party,  which, 
though  it  happened  a  full  year  ago,  has  only 
lately  been  completely  transmitted.  Yakub 
Jemil  was  an  influential  commander  of  a  fron- 
tier guard  near  the  Black  Sea  coast.    In  July 

*The  army  rations  have  lately  been  reduced,  each  Turkish 
soldier  receiving  daily  an  oke  of  bread  and  a  dried  mackerel. 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        233 

1916  he  went  to  Constantinople,  accompanied 
by  his  staff  (which  included  the  informant  from 
whom  this  account  is  derived),  and,  being  cor- 
dially received  by  Enver  and  Talaat,  discussed 
the  situation  with  them.  He  pointed  out  the 
demoralising  effect  of  the  Armenian  massacres, 
and  the  danger  of  Jemal  the  Great's  attitude 
towards  the  Arabs  in  Syria,  realising,  and  seek- 
ing to  make  them  realise,  the  stupendous  folly 
of  making  enemies  of  the  subject  peoples,  and 
urging  the  re-establishment  of  cordial  relations 
between  the  Turks  and  them.  That,  consider- 
ing that  Enver  and  Talaat  were  responsible 
(under  the  Germans)  for  the  Armenian  mas- 
sacres, was  a  brave  outspeaking.  He  went  on 
to  say  that  Turkey  was  at  war  not  on  behalf  of 
herself,  but  on  behalf  of  Germany,  and  that  it 
would  be  wise  of  the  Government  to  consider 
the  possibility  of  a  separate  peace  with  the 
Powers  of  the  Entente.  He  was  heard  with 
interest,  and  took  his  leave. 

He  remained  in  Constantinople,  and  his  views 
obtained  him  many  adherents,  not  only  among 
Turkish  officers  whose  sympathies  were  already 
alienated  from  Germany,  but  among  members 
of  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress.  But 
before  long  his  adherents  began  to  disappear, 
and  he  asked  for  another  interview  with  Talaat. 


234        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

He  was  received,  as  the  informant  states,  ''with 
open  arms,"  for  Talaat  seized  and  held  him, 
called  for  the  guard,  and  he  was  searched,  and 
on  him  were  found  certain  documents  which 
proved  him  to  hold  the  views  he  had  already 
expressed.  That  now,  was  enough.  He  was 
''interrogated"  for  two  days  (interrogation  is 
otherwise  called  torture),  and  was  then  hanged. 
Subsequently  111  officers  and  men  in  the  army 
also  disappeared.  Some  were  marched  into  the 
Khiat  Khana  VaUey,  opposite  Pera,  and  were 
stabbed:  others  were  sent  under  escort  to  the 
provinces  and  murdered.  No  courts-martial  of 
any  kind  were  held. 

And  should  anybody  doubt  the  efficiency  of 
German  control  in  Turkey,  and  be  disposed  to 
be  optimistic  about  the  imminence  of  Turkey's 
detachment,  he  might  do  well  to  ponder  that 
story. 

Meantime  the  efficacy  of  our  naval  blockade 
is  largely  discounted  by  Germany's  new  source 
of  supply.  Possibly  in  the  ensuing  winter  of 
1917-18  conditions  may  get  unbearable,  but  if 
the  Turkish  Government  only  two  years  ago 
massacred  more  than  a  million  of  its  subjects, 
it  would  be  absurd  to  expect  that  the  starving 
of  a  million  more  would  produce  much  effect  on 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        S35 

the  Ministers  of  the  Turkish  God  of  Love.^  The 
people  are,  of  course,  told,  with  suitable  statis- 
tics, how  famine  is  decimating  England  and 
France,  and  how  the  total  starvation  of  those 
unfortunate  countries  is  imminent.  Indeed,  of 
all  the  signs  of  want  of  confidence  in  their  Ger- 
man overlords,  by  far  the  most  promising  are 
the  facts  that  Talaat  and  Enver  have  sent  their 
money  out  of  the  country,  and  that  Jemal  the 
Great  has  a  swelled  head.  On  these  facts  there 
is  a  certain  justifiable  optimism  to  be  based. 
It  will  do  no  good  to  consider  them  academi- 
cally in  London;  but  are  there  not  practical 
channels  to  reach  the  instincts  of  the  Turkish 
triumvirate  that  might  be  navigated? 

We  need  not  trouble  ourselves  with  consider- 
ing what  the  Allies  will  have  to  do  with  the 
Turkish  army  when  once  the  end  of  the  war 
comes,  for  the  collapse  of  the  military  party  in 
Turkey,  which  owes  its  whole  vitality  to  Ger- 
many, will  be  perfect  and  complete.    But  the 

^  The  following  list  of  prices  in  Constantinople  is  of  inter- 
est:— 


July  1914. 

July  1917 

Eice,  per  lb. 

2Md. 

38.  4d. 

Milk,  per  quart 

5d. 

2s. 

Flour,  per  lb. 

3d. 

2s.  6d. 

Petroleum,  per  lb.   . 

Id. 

43.  6d. 

Pair  of  boots 

£1 

fiS. 

236        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

economical  future  of  Turkey  is  not  so  plain :  at 
the  present  moment  its  bankruptcy  is  total. 
Early  in  the  war  Germany  drained  it  of  such 
bullion  as  it  had,  and  has  since  then  advanced 
it  about  £150,000,000,  which,  as  far  as  I  can 
trace,  is  entirely  in  German  paper,  and  must  be 
redeemed  in  gold  at  some  period  (chiefly  two 
years)  after  the  end  of  the  war.  That  is  won- 
derful finance,  and  one  marvels  that  Turkey 
could  have  been  so  far  blinded  as  to  accept  it. 
But  I  expect  that  the  swallowing  of  the  first 
loan  was  sweetened  by  a  spoonful  of  jam  of 
this  kind.  Germany  pointed  out  that,  though 
England  was  quite  certainly  going  to  lose  the 
war,  she  had  issued  an  immense  paper  coinage 
which  had  all  the  purchasing  power  of  gold. 
Germany,  on  the  other  hand,  with  her  dear  Ally 
to  help  her,  was  just  as  certainly  going  to  win 
the  war.  How,  then,  could  there  be  the  slight- 
est risk  of  the  German  paper  money  depreciat- 
ing a  single  piastre  in  value!  That  sounded 
very  good  sense  to  Turkey,  who  was  equally 
convinced  that  she  would  be  on  the  victorious 
side  (else  she  would  not  have  joined  it),  and 
down  went  the  loan  with  a  pleasant  sensation  of 
sweetness.  A  second  loan  was  easily  induced 
by  the  failure  of  the  Dardanelles  expedition, 
and  about  then  the  ' '  ignorant ' '  Turkish  peasant 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        237 

began  to  wonder  whether  the  paper  was  quite 
as  valuable  as  gold,  and  to  prefer  gold  or  even 
the  ordinary  silver  piastre  to  its  German  equiv- 
alent. To  counteract  that,  as  we  have  seen,  a 
law  was  passed  making  it  criminal  to  hoard 
gold,  and,  to  complete  the  ruin,  the  silver  piastre 
was  called  in,  and  a  nickel  token  was  substituted. 
.  .  .  We  can  but  bow  our  heads  in  reverence  of 
the  thoroughness  of  German  swindling. 

Now  Turkey  is  completely  bankrupt,  and  we 
must  ask  ourselves  why  Germany  ever  bar- 
gained for  the  repayment  in  gold,  after  the  war, 
of  the  millions  she  had  lent  the  Turks  in  paper, 
if  she  knew  that  Turkey  could  never  repay  her. 
True,  the  loans  had  only  cost  her  the  paper  the 
notes  were  printed  on,  so  that  in  no  case  could 
she  prove  a  loser,  but  how  could  she  be  a  gainer  ? 
The  answer  to  that  question  shouts  at  us  from 
every  acre  of  Turkish  soil.  The  immense  un- 
developed riches  of  Turkey  supply  the  answer. 
Some  indeed  are  already  being  developed,  and 
the  labour  and  most  of  the  materials  have  been 
paid  for  by  the  German  paper  notes.  There  are 
the  irrigation  works  at  Adana,  there  is  the  beet- 
sugar  industry  at  Konia,  the  irrigation  works 
in  the  Makischelin  Valley,  the  mineral  conces- 
sions of  the  Bagdad  Railway,  the  Haidar  Pasha 
Harbour  concessions,  the  afforestation  scheme 


238        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

near  Constantinople,  the  cotton  industry  in  An- 
atolia— ^tliere  is  no  end  to  them.  Turkey  may 
not  be  able  to  pay  in  cash,  but  over  all  these 
concessions  already  working,  and  over  a  hun- 
dred more,  of  which  the  concessions  have  been 
granted,  Germany  has  a  complete  hold,  and  her 
victim  will  pay  in  minerals  and  cotton  and 
sugar  and  corn.  She  will  pay  over  and  over 
and  over  again,  as  none  who  have  the  smallest 
knowledge  of  Kultur-finance  can  possibly  doubt. 
She  is  bled  white  already,  and  for  the  rest  of 
time  bloodless  and  white  will  she  remain.  Only 
one  event  can  possibly  avert  her  fate,  and  that 
is  the  victory  of  the  Allies. 

We  have  been  so  bold  as  to  assume  that  this 
is  not  an  impossible  contingency,  and  on  that 
assumption  there  is  a  brighter  future  for  Tur- 
key than  the  Prussian  domination  could  ever 
bring  her.  Bankrupt  she  is,  but,  as  Germany 
saw,  she  is  rich  in  possibilities  even  with  regard 
to  the  restricted  territory  to  which  she  will 
surely  find  herself  limited,  and  it  is  a  pleasant 
chance  for  her  that  Germany  has  already  been 
so  busy  in  developing  the  resources  of  Anatolia. 
For  Germany  may  safely  bet  her  last  piece  of 
paper  money  that  she  will  not  lay  a  finger  on 
them. 

The  Turkey  of  the  future  is  to  be  for  the 


THE  GRIP  OF  THE  OCTOPUS        239 

Turks;  not  for  the  persecuted  Armenians,  nor 
for  the  Arabs,  nor  for  the  Greeks,  and  assuredly 
it  is  not  to  be  for  the  Prussians.  While  the  war 
lasts,  Germany  may  draw  supplies  from  the 
fields  her  artificial  manures  have  enriched,  and 
from  the  acres  that  her  paper  money  has 
planted,  but  after  that  no  more.  Her  Ottoman- 
ising  work  will  be  over.  Such  development 
(and  it  is  far  from  negligible)  as  she  has  done 
in  Syria  will  be  continued  under  French  protec- 
tion for  the  Arabs,  such  as  she  has  done  in 
Mesopotamia  under  English  protection,  and 
such  as  she  has  done  in  Anatolia  will  be  con- 
tinued by  the  Turks  to  drag  them  out  of  the 
utter  insolvency  that  she  has  brought  them  to. 
Never  before  has  a  country  so  justly  and  so 
richly  deserved  the  repudiation  of  a  debt  in- 
curred by  the  confidence  trick.  Not  a  civilised 
Government  in  the  world  would  dream  of  en- 
forcing payment,  any  more  than  a  magistrate 
would  enforce  a  payment  to  some  thimble-rigger 
returning  from  a  race-meeting. 

The  roar  of  battle  still  renders  inaudible  all 
voices  save  its  own,  but  already  the  dusk  begins 
to  gather  over  the  halls  where  sit  the  War-lord 
and  those  who,  for  the  realisation  of  their  mon- 
strous dreams,  loosed  hell  upon  the  world,  and 


240        CRESCENT  AND  IRON  CROSS 

in  the  growing  dusk  there  begin  to  steal  upon 
the  wall  the  letters  of  pale  flame  that  to  them 
portend  the  doom,  and  to  us  give  promise  of 
dawn.  Faintly  they  can  see  the  legend  Mene, 
Mene,  Tekel,  UpJiarsin.  .  .  . 


THE  END 


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